That wasn't there yesterday...
Tower of Guns
is a Roguelite First-Person Shooter made by Terrible Posture Games (composed of brothers Joe and Mike Mirabello, and Joe's wife, Colleen Mirabello) in 2014.A giant tower filled with robots and cannons has appeared in the middle of a peaceful village and it's your mission to enter the tower and destroy it.
Received a Spiritual Sequel in the form of Mothergunship.
Tower of Guns provides examples of:
- BFG: The Tower of Guns is made out of these, and you can wield many. The Babel Gun, Old Painless, Kegerator, and GG 9000 are just a few examples.
- Boss-Only Level: The Crow's Nest, accessible only by checking behind the exit after completing the Sanctum.
- Convection, Schmonvection: The Foundry is covered in pools of lava, but you and enemies alike can get as close to it as you want without getting hurt, so long as you don't touch it.
- Dual Boss: In later levels, bosses such as Snow Globe Bro can appear in pairs.
- Excuse Plot: A Random Excuse Plot at that. It can involve anything from a mouse attempting to get a DMV from the owner of the Tower of Guns, a General randomly yelling at some dude who stumbled into the Tower of Guns to destroy it, to attempting to deliver something to a Jerkass lady who lives in the final boss area.
- 100% Completion: The Collection screen on the main menu shows all items, gun mods, gameplay stats, the percentage and a funny rank for your savefile. It also give you a hint to increase the completion rate.
- Easter Egg: There is a message from Joe to Colleen at the beginning of the run beyond the wall behind you.
- End-Game Results Screen: After you die, it shows how many powerups you got, your guns with their levels and properties, current item, character stats and more.
- Endless Game: If you enable the endless mode, you will start at the first floor after defeating the final boss with increased difficulty. Even though you will eventually die, the game will track every time you defeat the final boss as another win on the collection screen.
- Evolving Weapon: All weapons start at level 1 and getting blue orbs and crystals fills your equipped weapon level bar up to 5, giving them increased stats. Once you fill the fifth bar completely, it reaches level 5 MAX. Getting hit will drain a chunk of the equipped weapon's bar. Each weapon has to be leveled up separately and some weapons get worse when they level up. The Taco Terror perk allows guns to reach level 6 MAX.
- Exact Words: One gun claims it's for every play style. It's a shotgun, but unlocking it requires you die 3 times, meaning every kind of play style will unlock it eventually.
- Guide Dang It!: How to beat the final (fake final, anyway) boss. Are you supposed to wait out the Bullet Hell? Is there something you have to do to take down their shields? Perhaps there's a ledge somewhere you're supposed to reach that allows you a better shot, since the room is so tall? The game doesn't tell.
- Lava Is Boiling Kool-Aid: The lava throughout the Foundry doesn't hurt too bad, and you can even swim in it. Exaggerated when you're using the Fireforce perk, which applies all the above in addition to the fact that the lava simply doesn't hurt you.
- Level Drain: Taking damage from enemies will cause your currently held gun to lose experience. The XP Lobber consumes its own XP every time it fires, to the point where pulling the trigger can make the gun drop an entire level.
- Recoil Boost: A wide variety of guns will push you backwards every time you fire them, which is required to reach a lot of secrets. One gun, Old Painless, is designed around this concept and allows you to fly backwards by holding the trigger.
- The Rubber-Band Gun inverts this by pulling you in the direction that you shot it in.
- Mascot Mook: The Hugbots, designed by Joe's wife Colleen, just want to give you a hug. You can get loot from them but they increase the current difficulty level for each one you kill. If you let them be instead, you might visit their hideout. The game also tracks how many of them you have killed through the entire savefile.
- More Dakka: Literally the theme of the game, everything that isn't a bomb or a spike is a gun, said guns shoot a lot of bullets, and said bullets are the size of a 10 year old child, the tower itself is literally constructed from giant guns.
- Multiple-Choice Past: Every run plays one random plot, presenting dialog boxes at the beginning and end of some floors and displaying an epilogue after winning. You can turn them off with the Silly Dialog option before starting a new run.
- No OSHA Compliance: The Gearworks floor is covered in exposed gears and cogs, some of which can hurt you if you touch them.
- Power Ups: Called Badges, they permanently increase or decrease one of your character stats.
There are Armor++, Crit Chance++, Damage++, Difficulty++, Difficulty—, EXP++, Health++, Height++, Item charge++, Jump++, Luck++, Magnet++, Speed++ and Random badges. - Power Up Let Down: Getting too many speed and jump-height badges may turn your character into an uncontrollable mess. Random badges, with the ? box icon, have a chance to increase or decrease one of your stats.
- The Trollhunter's firepower downgrades significantly if it goes above level 1.
- The Motivator also gets useless the higher it goes, until it hits Level Five - at which it's able to let you Rocket Jump.
- Shout-Out:
- One story has you playing as Bolbi Biggans, looking for an adventure.
- The "Pepto Mutt" storyline mentions all the other gun-doctors have been called to Madagascar to contain another outbreak.
- Smart House: The Tower itself. Everything is controlled by the Tower Heart.
- Standard FPS Guns: Many of the starting weapons are these; a selection of pistols, machine guns, shotguns, rocket launchers, along with a crossbow and grenade launcher. A few of the guns you can find in the Tower of Guns are of this ilk, as well.
- Take That!: One story has you trying to get a driver's license at the DMV. No, you didn't get lost - the tower is the DMV, and you need to "battle to [your] death for [your] right to drive".
- True Final Boss: The Maw, which can only be found in the Crow's Nest.
