Video Game / Tower Fortress

Tower Fortress is a Retraux-style action platformer game developed by Keybol and published by Nitrome.

The short story given: a mysterious tower suddenly appears in a village. From it an emitter emits poisonous gas that infects the town. It is up to the power armored heroine to come and save the day.

The official website is here.

Tower Fortress contains the following examples.

• Abnormal Ammo: The tornado and the bubble gun, both of which fire exactly what their respective names say.
• Advancing Wall of Doom: The third stage, "Vault", features a rotating crusher that rises from the bottom of the screen, destroying platforms, enemies and the player (if they don't climb quick enough) as it goes.
• All There in the Manual: The only way you are going to know the whole story and the main hero's name, or the fact that the hero is a girl, you need to look at their official website.
• Anti-Air: The lightsword, boomerang, bubble gun, T-gun, fork gun and tornado are all designed to be able to hit enemies above the player character, whether by traveling in an arc or just flying straight up. The homing weapon can also fulfill this role due to its seeking properties, while the rubber gun's bullets bounce off walls at an angle and thus can pull this off as well, albeit less reliably than the other options.
• Arbitrary Weapon Range: Homing. If an enemy is too close, the missiles will fail to lock on it.
• Arm Cannon: Sara's armor is equipped with this weapon as her main mode of attack. If you pick up the lightsword (or equip the Swordsman armor), it becomes a Laser Blade instead.
• Awesome, but Impractical: The laser. It hits for an outstanding 6 damage, pierces through enemies, reaches all the way across the screen and is a freaking laser. However, it also has the lowest ammo capacity of all weapons at a pitiful 20, along with the worst rate of fire, forcing you to make every shot count, and leaving you open to attack in between shots. Furthermore, unlike all other weapons, its shots don't even Wrap Around the edges of the screen in the library. The Recoil armor makes the laser your default weapon, which solves the ammo problem, but fixes nothing else and also increases the weapon's recoil.
• BFS: One of the enemies you can encounter in the chamber is a giant knight with an oversized sword.
• Bottomless Magazines:
  • Your default weapon, a simple gun with very short range, has unlimited ammo. Certain unlockable suits of armor change your default weapon to one of the weapons you can obtain from chests, applying this trope to the weapon in question as a result.
  • Invoked by the Dead Aim armor, which makes it so all weapons have infinite ammo.
  • Inverted with the lightsword, which despite being the game's only melee weapon, has limited ammunition just like any of the other weapons you can find in chests (unless you equip the Swordsman armor, which makes the lightsword your default weapon). This is possibly justified, as it's an Energy Weapon, so it would make sense for it to run out of power.
• Close-Range Combatant: Two suits of armor specialize in melee combat:
  • Super Sonic, which multiplies the spin jump's damage by 5, but also halves the ammo capacity of all weapons.
  • Swordsman, which makes the lightsword your default weapon, but also makes it so you can't get any other weapons at all.
• Cool Helmet: All the Powered Armor suits boast the same spikey helmet, as seen in the page image.
• Crippling Overspecialization: The tornado. Its shots spawn right in front of the player before flying straight up, making it useless against any enemies coming from the sides unless they're already too close for comfort. Other Anti-Air weapons are at least somewhat effective horizontally, but the tornado is virtually useless in that capacity.
• Cyclops: The majority of the enemies have only one eye.
• Deliberately Monochrome: Downplayed with the Donewell armor, which renders the entire game in black and white except for the enemies, which are red.
• Easy-Mode Mockery: Downplayed. There's an unlockable suit of armor that halves the health of bosses. Its name? "Noob".
• Evil Tower of Ominousness: Where the game takes place in. The fact that it has an emmiter spewing out toxic gas is enough to label it as evil. Not to mention the fact it just appears out of nowhere in the Sara's village.
• Excuse Plot: The full story is that Sara is the alchemist and weapons forger in her village. When the village was hit by the poisonous gas, her parents were caught in it since they were closer to the tower. In an effort to save her parents and the whole village, Sara takes upon herself to don her power armor, and venture into the tower to shut down the emitter.
• The Faceless: We never did see what Sara's face looks like. Only place where this is found is an official comic on Facebook.
• Flash Step: In the chamber, there are small knights that patrol the platform they're standing on at a leisurely pace. However, if you step on their platform while they're facing you, they'll rush your position in a fraction of a second.
• Giant Spiders: The first and fourth stages feature large spider-like creatures (although they only have four legs) which attempt to attempt to drop from the ceiling onto your character. The boss of stage 1 is a truly giant, crown-wearing spider (with the correct number of legs) which periodically spawns smaller versions of the spider-creatures.
• Glass Cannon: The Ranger armor increases your gun's damage by 1, but also reduces your max health to 3.
• Green Boy Color: One of the unlockable suits of armor is actually named "Green Boy", and it does exactly what you'd expect: it applies a green filter to the game, as an homage to the Game Boy.
• Kill It with Fire: The Flamethrower weapon pickup, boasting extremely high DPS and extremely limited range. The "Pyromania" suit has it equipped by default.
  • There's also a flamethrower-wielding type of Mook in Stage 3.
• King Mook: All bosses except for the Final Boss are this. The gatehouse has big spiders,^note These spiders reappear in the chamber while the boss is an giant spider who even wears a crown; the library features wizards that shoot lightning balls, while the boss is a big wizard who fires two energy balls at once; and the vault has monsters that wield drills, while the boss is a mook who pilots a giant drill machine.
• Laser Blade: The Lightsword weapon, which swings in a wide arc and is great for taking out hordes of enemies, but its short range makes it a pain to use against bosses. The Swordsman armor turns it into your default weapon, or rather, your only weapon, as equipping it causes no other weapons to spawn throughout your playthrough.
• One-Hit-Point Wonder: The Pro armor makes it so you only have one hit point, but also triples the value of any gems you collect.
• One-Hit Polykill:
  • The flamethrower, laser, boomerang and lightsword all pierce through enemies, allowing you to hit multiple enemies at once. The piercer buff makes all weapons piercing.
  • Under the right circumstances, the shotgun, 3-way, T-gun, double machine gun and fork gun can take out more than one enemy at the same time simply due to firing more than one bullet at once.
• Power Armor: Sara wields one to fight against the goo monsters and the toxic gas. You can use the gems you collect during playthroughs to unlock special suits of armor, which either come with added perks and drawbacks or are merely cosmetic.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: All of the monsters (with the sole exception of the ghosts in stage 2) have these. Just look at the page image!
• Retraux: While the game already has a retro aesthetic, two unlockable suits of armor add further to this trope: Donewell, which makes the game Deliberately Monochrome with red enemies; and Green Boy, which applies a green filter in the style of the Game Boy.
• Rolling Attack: Whenever you double jump, Sara will use her armor's spikes to perform one of these, dealing a small amount of damage (and bouncing off of) any enemy you crash into. Collecting the 'double spin' buff turns any jump into a spin.
• Samus Is a Girl: The silent hero, Sara, shoots their way through the tower is this. Granted, its never revealed in-game, only through the official website.
• Short-Range Shotgun: Played with. The shotgun's pellets only reach a few steps away from the player character, but the distance from one edge of the screen to the other is very short in itself, making the shotgun's range decent in relation to the screen.
• Shout-Out:
  • The game's website acknowledges that it takes inspiration from different games:
    The game is heavily inspired by many games, from classics to the indie games today. Most obvious is its Downwell nod. Other indie game influences are Nuclear Throne and Binding of Isaac. It also pays homage to old favorites like Sonic, Metroid, Contra and Megaman.
  • Sara's design and game-play mechanics is like a mix between Samus Aran, Sonic, and Mega Man.
  • The suit of armor that increases the spin jump's damage is named Super Sonic, and has the same color scheme as the namesake transformation from Sonic the Hedgehog.
• Superheroes Wear Capes: Sara sure knows how to make a cape go with power armor.
• Sword Beam: When the giant knights in the chamber swing their swords, they produce an energy wave that travels a moderate distance ahead and can damage you.
• This Is a Drill: Many of the monsters in the vault wield drills, while the boss is a tiny monster who pilots a giant drill machine.
• Video Game Flamethrowers Suck: Downplayed. The flamethrower has a slight delay when fired and has very short range, but also has one of the highest damage outputs in the whole game.
• Wrap Around: In the library, you can walk into the edge of the screen to come out from the opposite edge. This also applies to enemies and projectiles, requiring the player to watch them carefully.