Warlock's Tower

For a lot of people, the Game Boy was the portable system that played watered-down versions of Super Mario Bros. and Final Fantasy. For me, however, Nintendo's handheld was home to a lot of weird puzzle games like Kwirk and Boxxle. The new game Warlock's Tower took me back to my childhood of trying to figure out one brain-teasing level after another in glorious black and white. This is definitely a game that would have fit in perfectly next to all of my little Game Boy cartridges, but does that make it worth playing in 2019?

You know how postal employees proudly proclaim that "neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night" will keep them from delivering the mail? Well, Warlock's Tower is going to put that saying to the test. This is the story of Tim, a brave mailman who has been tasked with delivering an important letter to an evil warlock named, well, Evil Warlock. You see, this is a guy who sits at the top of a life-draining tower plotting his revenge on those who shunned him. To prevent a catastrophe, the world leaders have gotten together to write a peace message that will prove to the evil warlock that he's actually loved.

This is a suicide mission, but Tim is up for the challenge. He'll start at the ground floor and puzzle his way through one-hundred bite-sized levels in an effort to deliver the mail and save the world. The problem is that he only has a certain number of steps or he'll get snapped out of existence. The trick is to use those steps wisely and pick up special items that will give our hero a few more much-needed moves. If he can move strategically and get to the exit in one piece, then he'll move onto the next stage and go deeper into the tower.

As you would imagine, this simple premise quickly escalates by adding different types of enemies, traps, keys, conveyer belts, dark rooms and even an extra character you'll need to move around to solve the large puzzles. The levels go from easy, single-screen pushovers to elaborate affairs that will have you trying every combination before getting it right.

I'll confess, I was initially dubious that there would be enough wrinkles to this concept to keep me invested for one-hundred stages, but I was wrong. Warlock's Tower is a game that continues to add new obstacles and make sweeping changes right up to the very end. And I like how a lot of this is worked into the story, thanks to conversations we have with other people stuck in the tower. There's more personality in this game than you normally get from puzzlers, and I like how it didn't feel forced like some of the old Game Boy games.

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At the same time, there's nothing especially original here. We've seen a lot of these concepts and obstacles in other games, and if the first few levels don't hook you, then the rest of Warlock's Tower certainly won't. There are also a few levels that took a lot more trial and error than I would have liked, which isn't helped by the occasionally stiff gameplay.

On the other hand, a lot of those issues could easily be leveled at the old school puzzle games that clearly influenced the developer. Sure, we've seen a lot of this before, but not in this kind of monochromatic package. Between the 8-bit graphics, bite-sized levels and chiptunes soundtrack, this is a game that could have easily skated by on nothing more than its nostalgic charm, but there are some pretty good puzzles to be found in Warlock's Tower.