When you think Neuronized could not outdo themselves with Cats and the original Drop Wizard, they come through with Drop Wizard Tower. After forging an incredible publishing deal with Nitrome, they continue the journey of Tio and his magician friends. 

Neutronized is undoubtedly known for creating cool feels and graphics reminiscent of retro arcade games. The developers have cracked the mechanism of presenting arcade gameplay on mobile phones. Drop Wizard Tower is now compatible with both Android and iOS phones. 

Drop Wizard Tower is light gameplay hinged on relaxation and upward dungeons. It was interesting to note that the levels are random, so you can’t learn patterns. But you can adapt to the situations the game throws at you – and it throws quite a lot.

Very Dynamic Game Play

In Drop Wizard Tower, Tio and his magical companions have been captured and jailed by Lord Relic and the Shadow Order at the bottom of a tower, and they have to work their way up dungeons in a bid to escape. They have to each go through 50 wraparound single-screen levels battling minions of the Shadow Order and get to the magical egg at the top of the tower. On your way up, you gather in-game gems that constitute your life and serve as currency to level up your skills and toughen your magic.

The game’s beauty is that you have to play through every character. Once you get to the top of the tower with one character, that one is free, but you cannot see what is in the egg until all the wizards have been freed. I liked that every wizard has unique powers that make their run different from the previous. Each level is a wraparound, so until you finish off all enemies in a stage, you cannot proceed, but you can exit from one end of the screen and pop in from the other side. This gives a sense of scale to a game that can sometimes feel constricted or limiting.

The Drop Wizard Tower gameplay reminds me a lot of the classic Bubble Bobble, and Snow Bros. Drop Wizard Tower hits a home run with the controls. Instead of swiping through the screens and obstructing the game with your hands, the developers have placed large buttons at the bottom of the game screen. The controls are also simple: left or right. You cannot jump or stop running, and you fire bullets every time you leap from the platform’s edge. This not only elevates the arcade foundation of the game but also makes it more intuitive and fun. 

Levels Are Unpredictable In A Good Way

Although the controls can seem monotonous, the levels consist of new environments, which forces you to change strategies periodically. You can switch from skiddy ice surfaces to pods of water that dramatically slow down movement and force you to rethink your approach to gameplay. 

You face various bosses at every stage; they all have interesting things up their sleeves. They are also incredibly hard to kill sometimes, which was a challenge I enjoyed accepting every single time. There is a magical umbrella that takes you to leap through entire stages if you want.

Falls Into The Free-To-Play Trap

As a heavy mobile gamer, it is not news that when a game is free to play, they tend to rely heavily on in-app purchases, incessant ads, or both. Well, Drop Wizard Tower comes with quite many ads, which can be annoying for many players. The ads show up and mess with the smooth gameplay. The good news is that you can eliminate ads by paying a token, which feels like upgrading to a premium game version. Like any reasonable developer, Neutronized lets you have a feel of the game to decide if it is worth spending real money on. And it is.

In-game gems are the currency used to level up, keep the character going when they die, and purchase new features within the game. Although you get them in abundance, the more you use them, the more gems you need to revive your character, and they can get pretty high to the point where you need to use real-life money to purchase them. They are fairly cheap and keep the game going. It is good that the game is not built around constantly and greedily forcing you to spend real-life money in the game.

Incredibly Arcade-Themed Graphics And Soundtrack

The graphics stayed true to the arcade setting as expected. It is exciting and, quite frankly, one of the best graphics of modern arcade games. The magical displays are also true to the theme. However, I noticed that the game was optimized for phones. An awkward display accompanies playing the game on larger devices like an iPad. I think this awkwardness is a disservice to those who would rather play on tablets.

The sound of this game makes me wonder if a game can be too “arcadey.” In a bid to stay true to the arcade-style, the game lost diversity with the soundtrack as it did with the graphics. There was practically only one song playing, making it feel monotonous. I expected that each character would have a unique sound. This would have infused a level of audio dynamism into the game.

Conclusion

In conclusion, I think Drop Wizard Tower falls under the category of classic mobile games. It isn’t easy to nail the classic arcade style and infuse it with modern graphics and finesse, so this definitely deserves a medal. It is a meatier version of the prequel that adds a new intelligent element to the gameplay. You can unlock and play as different wizards, gathering gems from a rumbling avalanche of deadly enemies. If this is your type of game, I highly recommend Drop Wizard Tower.