Towers of Scale

An RPG in name only, and reviewers are thrilled about it

Towers of Scale describes itself with unusual honesty right on its own store page: a resource-management optimization puzzle game "under a guise of an RPG." Strip away the dungeon-crawling, fantasy pixel-art dressing, and what's underneath is a member of the niche "magic tower" genre, where players navigate a fixed, puzzle-box dungeon managing keys, gold, enemies, and one-way paths to reach a goal with the highest possible score. It's a genre defined almost entirely by one towering, notoriously demanding predecessor — Tactical Nexus — and every single review in the current pool measures Towers of Scale against it directly. The overwhelming verdict, reflected in a perfect "Positive" rating from all 26 current English reviews, is that Towers of Scale succeeds spectacularly at a very specific goal: making that genre's deep, satisfying optimization puzzles accessible to players who found the genre's usual entry points too intimidating or opaque to bother with.

One stat, an enormous amount of depth

The game's central design decision is stripping away the usual RPG trappings of attack, defense, and hit points down to a single stat called Power, which simultaneously gates what a player can do and serves as their score. Multiple reviewers who describe themselves as unable to get into Tactical Nexus specifically credit this simplification with making large-scale route planning across an entire tower feel genuinely tractable rather than overwhelming, letting them reason confidently about multi-step plans instead of getting lost in spreadsheets of stats. Crucially, reviewers with hundreds and even thousands of hours in the wider genre are equally enthusiastic, describing the reduction as elegant rather than shallow — one long-time genre veteran calls it possibly their favorite game of the year, praising how a ruleset learnable in ten seconds keeps delivering new insight for days, with breakthroughs coming from genuine strategic reframing rather than tedious micro-optimization.

Sixteen towers, each with its own identity

The current Early Access build ships two chapters totaling six main towers each, plus three bonus towers, for sixteen stages total, and reviewers consistently praise how distinct each one feels despite the shared, minimal ruleset — every room reportedly built around its own specific trade-off or twist that keeps the core loop from feeling repetitive. A meta-progression layer sits on top: clearing a tower for a personal-best score earns gems, which unlock extra starting resources and bonus areas, in turn opening up entirely new routing strategies to push scores even higher on a later replay. Reviewers describe this loop as self-balancing and genuinely fascinating rather than a simple difficulty-softening currency, though it's worth noting the system is still fairly early in its own development — one especially detailed review with over 300 hours logged points out that only a single meta-progression unlock currently exists, even though that one unlock already meaningfully changes how every tower can be approached.

Built for the puzzle-curious, not just the puzzle-hardened

Where Towers of Scale earns its warmest praise is accessibility without dumbing anything down. An infinite undo queue and manual savestates mean experimentation carries no real risk, colorblind-friendly, low-spec-friendly pixel art keeps the presentation readable and lightweight, and a demo multiple reviewers call unusually generous — offering the six easiest towers in full — lets players confidently judge fit before spending money. Several reviewers frame this directly as the best current entry point into the wider magic-tower genre for exactly that reason, with more than one specifically recommending it to friends who'd previously bounced hard off Tactical Nexus's steeper learning curve and denser math. That said, "accessible" is relative: multiple reviewers are equally clear that real difficulty spikes begin appearing from around the sixth tower onward, and the genre's core appeal — carefully reasoning through resource trade-offs across dozens of interlocking decisions — remains a fundamentally niche, mentally demanding pleasure that reviewers themselves repeatedly warn isn't for everyone.

Real value, with the caveat of being early

At roughly NZ$16, reviewers are close to unanimous that Towers of Scale already offers strong value for an Early Access release, with one estimate placing around 100 hours of content on the table even before the promised additional towers arrive, and another reviewer specifically contrasting the price favorably against Tactical Nexus's much steeper time investment. It's worth being clear-eyed, though, that "100 hours" reflects deep engagement with score-optimization and meta-progression chasing rather than a hundred hours of new content to simply walk through once — for a player who just wants to clear each tower once and move on, the current sixteen stages will go by considerably faster, with the real depth reserved for players willing to revisit towers repeatedly in pursuit of a better score.

Verdict

Towers of Scale is a genuinely excellent puzzle game that happens to be wearing RPG clothing rather loosely — reviewers across a wide range of experience with the notoriously demanding magic-tower genre are near-unanimous that its single-stat simplification and carefully themed towers make for one of the best entry points the genre has ever had, without sacrificing the deep optimization thinking that genre fans specifically show up for. Anyone coming in expecting traditional RPG storytelling, character builds, or progression systems should look elsewhere entirely, and the genre's inherent niche appeal means this won't click for everyone regardless of how well executed it is. But for puzzle players curious about magic-tower games, or genre veterans who bounced off harder predecessors, Towers of Scale is already an easy, confident recommendation this early into Early Access.