In 2014, the idea of a first person rogue-lite was pretty novel. Most were still top down and/or 2D a la The Binding of Isaac, Rogue Legacy, and Dungeons of Dredmor, and while some in the 3D realm did exist, such as Eldritch and Paranuatical Activity, Tower of Guns was the first to make an impression on me, and perhaps solidify my love for the genre. It’s hectic and absurd, a true embodiment of a Quake-style shooter, only with rogue-lite elements. And while it holds up pretty well in terms of a shooter, it’s already starting to look dated by how little content there is.

It’s a silly game from top to bottom. Like Quake, the weapons we use aren’t exactly conventional, spanning from a saw blade shooter to a disproportional hand cannon to a literal tiny Hadron Collider. All of them, to some extent, offer a fun time, though their lack of impact – combined with zero enemy recoil – does make them feel a tad weak. We can upgrade thending\em overtime with passive XP drops, but sadly each upgrade is typically just a damage or rate of fire boost, which for a game as bonkers as Tower of Guns I would’ve hoped for more. Before each run, we choose a perk to help (or hinder) us. One gives you a triple jump from the off, another makes you immune to self damage, and another just makes the game wholly easier, offering more bullet damage, higher armour and less difficult enemies – while another perk does the opposite.

And while the weapons wear thin fairly quickly, and the enemies’ lack of reaction to your attacks leave a lot to be desired, it’s a romp, holding no bars in allowing for absolute nonsense, and in fact actively encourages it. It’s a movement based shooter, very much of the vertical variety, populating levels with foes stuck to ceilings, hopping and hovering across the air, and to make up for that, the game liberally allows for upgrades to the amount of jumps you can make midair, along with jump height and general speed. By the end of a run, you can simulate what it must feel like for a top tier DOOM speedrunner to zip through stages in seconds. Tower of Guns plonks plenty of secrets – like an oldschool shooter – around each level, a lot of them requiring soaring through the sky to hard to reach ledges and mantels. Some (again like oldschool shooters) are completely esoteric, and I had a particular disdain for any hidden behind false walls, but flying through the air, blasting robots from the skybox, and picking up an extra jump or two here and there exemplifies what Tower of Guns does best.

While I’m a bit down on the game’s gunplay, it’s completely serviceable. It’s negated somewhat by enemy variety, both in actual enemy types and how they are placed across levels. Many turret-style hostiles hold static positions, though to comedic effect they’re often latched to moving walls or upside down on a roof. Flying foes offer a more pressing worry, while bigger, slower moving tanks can take chunks off your health if you get too close. Though the lack of oomph is disappointing, beefing up your character with a handful of damage upgrades and mowing through a whole room of enemies is still fun. Watching a horde of floating bombs quickly explode from a few well placed rockets is a satisfying sight, while circle strafing a boss has its moments of glee as well.

Where Tower of Guns shows its age is in its lack of content. In writing this review, I found there are actually double the amount of guns I thought there were, though given I’ve completed several runs, unlocked every starting gun and perk and hadn’t seen a single one, I question how many others will see them too. Level design is broadly solid, mostly held up by the oldschool infatuation with secret areas, but is visually rather bland and starts to repeat rapidly. Unless you play in endless mode – which, get this, is endless – an entire run can span a mere twenty minutes, and doesn’t leave me satisfied, lacking a proper ending, and in same instances, any challenge at all. The choice of perks, while technically adequate, is actually limited in usefulness, and I found myself returning to the same two or three choices every time. Within runs, you don’t have much influence over what upgrade path you can take either, and given many secrets filled with coins, XP, or even plain upgrades themselves are often behind several jumps, you might not be able to acquire any at all.

Compared to modern takes on the genre, Tower of Guns is more a proof of concept than a veritable classic. When I played this in 2014, it was truly something unique. My love for games like DOOM and Quake hadn’t borne fruit yet, and going back to this a decade later, I can appreciate where it took obvious inspiration, and where it took it to a completely wacky extent. It’s for that reason Tower of Guns is still worth a look, though given how much choice we have nowadays, its lack of complexity and content is sure to mean playtime’s that fall short of much of its newer interpretations.