The development started with an unsuccessful Kickstarter campaign, the failure
of which led to a successful Indie Gogo campaign, and a release through Steam Early Access on April 8th, 2016. It remains in active development today, and you can see the extent of their roadmap here.
The current game functions just like GMod Tower, but with servers being handled differently. Users can now host their own servers in the game modes and access their condos without a need for a Lobby server with open condos in the tower while a Lobby server will require a dedicated server to conform to a certain standard in order for players to earn both Units and for items earned therein to be considered "genuine" when inspecting them. A lot of content from GMod Tower will be ported over in some (lawyer friendly) state such as the new currency known as Units and other returning features such as the theater.
Game Worlds:
- Plaza: The main part of the game, where you hang out and talk with others in the lobby, fish, duel in Laser Tag, watch YouTube videos with others in the theater, play minigames, bowl, shop for items in the stores, Play Trivia, play Arcade games, and much more.
- Virus: Based on a similar game mode from TimeSplitters 2, players start the match armed with an assortment of weapons before one player is chosen at random to become the Infected, at which point they have to touch other players to infect them while the survivors have to fend them off until the time limit expires.
- Minigolf: Exactly What It Says on the Tin, a game of Minigolf set on various eighteen hole courses.
- Ball Race: Inspired by Super Monkey Ball, players roll their ball through a course to finish first, collecting bana—- watermelon slices along the way for bonus Units.
- Little Crusaders: The copyright-free port of The Ultimate Chimera Hunt in which one player will be chosen to be the dragon and has to kill the rest of the players who play as the knights, those of which have to get behind the dragon to defeat it in a manner similar to pressing the Chimera's button. Like in UCH, a player who defeats the dragon will be promoted from esquire to knight, baron and count which increases Unit payout for every round but resets upon being killed by the dragon.
- Zombie Massacre: Players survive and battle zombies from a top down perspective in arcade fashion, each player can chose a specialization with both a special ability that charges over time and another that charges with enough kills.
- Accelerate: A kart based Wacky Racing game not unlike that of Mario Kart. Currently has four tracks with more tracks and more kart customization options on the way.
- Slaughterday Night Live (In Beta): A free for all, arena based First-Person Shooter mode with plenty of alternative modes. These include (with more on the way): Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, Capture the Flag, Oddball, Gun Game, InstaGib, Space Snipers, Arena, Slasher, Grav Glove, and most uniquely, Dino Battle, which splits the players into two teams: Hunters and Dinos (which are Velociraptors).
- Planet Panic! (Unfinished): A new game with a rather unique look. Players pilot floating UFOs either as cat or dog-like creatures, picking up orbs from the center of the map to their base. Players can shoot the other team and steal orbs from the other team as well. Unfortunately, the game was rather buggy when hosting from the lobby and there's only one map, making it a sadly depopulated game world, and this eventually lead to it being made unavailable with plans to help make it better in the future via a rework which includes Tower Defense elements.
- Horror Hill (Unfinished): Stated to be a cooperative mode where players investigate a haunted building and work together
The tropes in Tower Unite (Note that many tropes in GMod Tower apply here as well):
- Alien Geometries/Bigger on the Inside: The condos are both impossibly big to fit side-by-side within the tower but are shown to be many stories high up on the tower. Yet, they have a full patio and beach out the back and if you look around, you'll notice the condo is on its own secluded island. The addition of the House and Smooth Dirt condo types in the 0.1.6.0 update takes this even further.
- Later updates added an art studio (okay, potentially plausible), a high rise apartment at the top of a skyscraper (not even the same building the condo is located in, by the way), a huge underwater complex on the ocean floor... Oh, and the entire original lobby from Gmod Tower, which should speak for itself, really, considering it's second only to the actual Tower Unite lobby itself in terms of size.
- All or Nothing: The 'Double Or Nothing' minigame in the Casino is this.
- Always Night: Unlike during the rest of the year, The Plaza during Halloween is this no matter how much time passes.
- Amazing Technicolor Population: Compared to the previous game which usually only allowed the colorization of the shirts on a player model, players can change the color on multiple parts of their character, including their clothes, eyes, hair and skin (and in the case of milk cartons and skeletons, carton and bone color, respectively).
- And with Steam Workshop support, you can basically be anything, using player-created models from a variety of sources.
- And Your Reward Is Clothes: Many milestone rewards often give you accessories for either your character model or for customizable aesthetics in Game Worlds.
- And Your Reward Is Interior Decorating: Plenty of milestone rewards are also furniture items for condos, many of them being tiered trophies of the various games and areas (from Bronze to Silver, Gold, and then Diamond) as well as other unique furniture items.
- An Interior Designer Is You: Slightly more open than the previous game, now allowing you to change the colors and brightness of various lights, the colors and patterns of the walls, floors and ceilings and even change the color of furniture items such as both beds and their sheets. Some even have the "canvas" tag, allowing you to import a custom picture!
- 0.1.6.0 introduces a condo realtor system in which you can buy additional condo types, the Classic Suite for those that enjoyed the smaller space or wanted a bit of nostalgia, a proper, split-level house, a large, flat map (ala, gm_flatgrass) in which you can build a house completely from scratch, a luxury high-rise rooftop apartment (with a "basement area" which is really just one big room that takes up multiple floors in the building), a huge underwater complex... And an art studio. Basically, interior designers have a lot of options.
- Additional options added in later updates include a movie theater and a HD remake of Lobby 1 from GMod Tower.
- Anti-Frustration Features:
- During Halloween, there is a quest to find Jack-o'-lanterns placed all over the plaza map. Finding one will change its glow to purple to indicate that the player has already found it. The same goes for another quest with bone piles, which emit a red smoke once found.
- In the Arcade, you don't have to pick up your tickets manually; they'll be picked up automatically if they're left on the floor long enough.
- Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: The boss at the end of each of the three Zombie Massacre maps end with a fight against The Queen, an enormous spider that can shoot webs and spit acid.
- Betting Mini-Game: The Casino returns with two new slot machine types and a video Blackjack game.
- Bland-Name Product: Mostly applies to electronic devices. Blu-Ray players become Bru Ray players, Sony becomes Nony, Smart TVs get renamed to Shmart TVs, to name a few.
- Via an arcade prize item, NERF becomes BERT for the BERT Gun.
- Bling-Bling-BANG!: A milestone reward for Virus lets you change the standard handgun to a golden one.
- Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick: In the Fresh shop, you can buy apples, bananas, pizzas... and skulls.
- Bribing Your Way to Victory: Averted. Everything in the game can be earned just through buying and playing the game with only exclusive, completely cosmetic furniture items being awarded to backers and GMod Tower players. Just buy the game and you can get anything in the game without additional payment. The only item of Downloadable Content is the game's soundtrack, which doesn't provide any sort of in-game benefit either.
- Camera Perspective Switch: Like its predecessor, you can freely switch between first and third-person views in the Plaza.
- Captain Ersatz: Two obtainable prizes in the Arcade are the Obnoxious Citrus and the Faithful Cucumber plush items. Their designs and descriptions require no explanation as to who they're based on.
- Chainsaw Good: In Zombie Massacre and the Chainsaw Deathmatch minigame in the Lobby.
- Cute Kitten: This game seems to have some sort of thing for cats of various depictions such as the Cat Sack prize bags, various cats seen on the slot machines, cats in the deck of cards used to play Texas Hold 'Em, Video Poker and Video Blackjack, cat ears, cat hat, and so forth.
- Damn You, Muscle Memory!: Averted, the developers made sure that this game shared very similar keybinds to that of Garry's Mod to ensure that players migrating from GMod Tower wouldn't get confused.
- Dem Bones: Players can choose a skeleton for their character model since the 0.1.3.0 Halloween update.
- Dragons Versus Knights: In Little Crusaders, a group of knights have to take down a dragon by pushing a button on his back.
- Fluffy the Terrible: According to a gravestone that can only be spotted during Halloween, a spider named "Sally" is said to have been killed by zombie hunters from Zombie Massacre due to a misunderstanding. It is unclear if this is the name of "The Queen" boss, or just a random spider enemy, which also doubles as What Measure Is a Mook? if so.
- Friendly Skeleton: A skeleton named King Arthritis runs the Remains Exchange Expressway in the Celebrations shop. He's equal parts chill, punny, and Deadpan Snarker.
- Gag Penis: The strange tube very much looks like it once a player goes into water with it equipped.
- Grid Inventory: For both player items and condo items, the grid is infinite and items are stored in your Steam inventory though none of the items you earn can be traded or sold on the community market.
- Intoxication Mechanic: Drink one or two alcoholic drinks and your screen will start getting blurry and tipsy. Drink a little more and you'll be projectile vomiting for a long while.
- Kill Sat: The A.L.P.S. beacon deployed by the Mercenary in Zombie Massacre allows a satellite above to vaporize zombies within the beacons range.
- Laser Blade: One of the prize weapons obtainable via the arcade is the Laser Saber. On top of being able to change color, they make sounds very much akin to what it's based on.
- Level Ate: The Sweet Tooth map in Minigolf is made entirely out of candy and other treats, complete with ice cream mountains and chocolate rivers.
- Macro Zone: Accelerate's Bedzoom and Little Crusaders' Toy Room are both these in addition to being set in a kid's bedroom.
- Mythology Gag: The last half of the description of the watch cosmetic says "Does not enable coughing", which is in reference to Elevator: Source, another game mode for Garry's Mod created by Pixeltail.
- Massive Multiplayer Crossover: Ever since Workshop was implemented for player models, the kinds of characters you'll run into is virtually limitless.
- No Fair Cheating: Macros were once a problem in the casino, allowing player to simply hold space while they did something. Now casino machines give a popup message asking if you're still there and to press a random non-Space key. Doing so lets you keep playing and awards you 150 Units, otherwise you get booted from the machine. Depending on the machine, you either get booted straight back to the spawn area or right next to the machine itself.
- If you used exploits to earn money in GMod Tower, you don't get any when you import your save to Tower.
- Noodle Incident: According to a gravestone that can only be spotted in the plaza during Halloween, the reason why Rob of Rob's Imports only appears as a phone is because he got turned into one by a dark wizard in 2007.
- Nostalgia Level: The Suite condo, a recreation of the condo from Gmod Tower Lobby 1.
- Several Game World maps from the original gamemode have been ported to Tower Unite.
- Memories in Ball Race was ported from GMod Tower, albeit shorter in length. Khromidro and Paradise also return. Sand World is also back under the new name Oasis.
- Forest makes a return in Minigolf. Waterhole, while retaining the same general theme of the original course, received a complete makeover.
- Desertion and Hospital were remastered for Virus.
- Trainyard and Compound returned in Zombie Massacre.
- The 0.6.4.0 update introduced the "Resort" condo, an HD remake of Lobby 1 from Gmod Tower.
- Several Game World maps from the original gamemode have been ported to Tower Unite.
- Old Save Bonus: Players of GMod Tower have the value of their existing items converted into Units along with trophies of Awards they earned (excluding copyright-based ones like "Zelda Fanboy") and collector's plates if they played either of the two Lobbies.
- One-Hit Kill:
- In Slaughterday Night Live's Dino Battle mode, the raptors that make up Team Dino are only able to land melee attacks by lunging, but to compensate, they usually can inflict this on a human. This can make it easy for them to rack up points if the human team doesn't coordinate well.
- Another SDNL example is the game's Instagib mode, as per the name where it takes one shot to kill the opponent.
- Our Vampires Are Different: Vampires in Zombie Massacre look more like gargoyles and are more monstrous in behavior. Unlike traditional vampires though, they can be felled with gunfire and the like.
- Peninsula of Power Leveling: The Arcade has some machines that are very good for grinding tickets to get certain items quicker. At launch, ball tossing machines Little Birde Feeders and Avalanche were generally seen as the best ones, being able to rack up 500-600 tickets per session with the right conditions met, which are fairly easy to follow.
- Version 0.14.3.0 introduced two more notable high paying arcade machines through Phase 2: Coin River and Dragon's Treasure. These are coin pusher machines, which have simple controls and don't require precise aim. What really makes them viable for grinding, is how they can pay out at least 1000 tickets per session in most cases via scoring the bonus items. However, the former's design allows for more than double the amount of tickets per session. While they do have a higher token requirement to play (60 and 40 respectively), it's little wonder why these tend to be most occupied of the Phase 2 arcade machines.
- Reference Overdosed: Accelerate loves to reference all of Tower Unite as a whole within its slew of items:
- Items like Beer, bowling balls and the Pin Shield reference the ability to drink beer and play bowling while in the plaza. Additionally, the All Powerful Sun* plays "SUNSHINE DAY!" at a slightly higher pitch when it hits a player.
- The Minigolf Hole, true to its name, is taken from Minigolf.
- Bumpers and Melons from Ball Race. The former functions like it does in its home game, and the latter serve as boost items ala Mushrooms. Complete with triple and temporary infinite boost variants.
- Little Crusaders is referenced by the Birb Shield and Combustible Cornelius items* .
- Refuge in Audacity: The online 'commercials' for the condos. They're all presented by "Jeff", except they're all voiced by completely different people (one of them is a woman), the name "Jeff" is spoken by other voices in various weird ways. And then there's the actual narration in general...
- Retraux: Vox, who runs the prize counter in the WarpZone Arcade, is rendered like a sprite in an early First-Person Shooter, complete with rotation sprites for each 45° angle.
- Self-Deprecation: During Halloween, some gravestones can be found in the plaza, but one of them◊ is a jab at the previous iteration of the plaza. Also doubles as Old Shame from the developer's end.
- Sequence Breaking: In Ball Race, you can see the upcoming and previously-finished stages far ahead in the background in most levels, but sometimes the stages aren't separated far enough, and depending on the level design, you can jump into a different stage altogether and enter its finish line, counting as completing the current stage.
- Shout-Out: Has its own page.
- Sinister Subway:
- Virus' Subway level is a downplayed example of this. While the subway is still well lit, there's still infected to worry about along with how there's no trains running.
- Zombie Massacre's Trainyard and Nightyard levels are outdoor versions of this trope, with everything abandoned and barren. The latter level fully plays this straight with how the level is near-pitch black.
- Sizeshifter: Potions can be purchased from The Stray that change a player's size in the lobby, ranging from Tiny (10%) to Large (150%)
- Smoking Is Not Cool: Both descriptions for the cigarette and cigar cosmetic items say "Smoking is bad for your health."
- Songs in the Key of Panic:
- In Virus, an intense piece plays when there's one remaining survivor.
- Little Crusaders has a fast-paced piece that plays when less than thirty seconds remain.
- The music in Accelerate will speed up on the last lap.
- Toy Time: Accelerate's Bedzoom and Little Crusaders' Toy Room levels are this, as they are in a kid's bedroom. The former is set on toy racetracks, while the latter has various toys and more strewn about for the Knights and Dragon to navigate.
- Tricked-Out Gloves: The Tower Glove, which condenses all the previous condo tools into one item.
- A Twinkle in the Sky: Available as a Hole-In-One effect for your golf ball in Minigolf.
- Unrealistic Black Hole:
- The Scientist class in Zombie Massacre can create one as their special ability, able to suck up and instantly kill any non-boss monster that gets too close but with a short range, making it excellent for choke points.
- You can also choose to use this as a cosmetic Hole-In-One effect in Minigolf.
- Virtual Paper Doll: Like its predecessor, but expanded on; players can customize many more aspects of their character's appearance and buy a wide variety of accessories much more diverse and in-depth than just player model, color, a hat and accessory.
- Voice Grunting: While King Arthritis already had these in the form of Xylophones for Walking Bones, these were fully added to many NPCs in the game in version 0.17.5.0, which was the 2023 holiday update.
- Weaponized Camera: The Journalist's Combo Ability in Zombie Massacre is a camera flash that outright kills weaker monsters around them. Because of the instant use nature compared to other classes, it's possible to use it multiple times in quick succession if you kill enough enemies with each flash.
- What Does This Button Do?: There's a hidden backdoor area that contains a single button with a gigantic DO NOT PRESS sign. Of course, it doesn't stop curious players that want to press it, which causes the screen to go crazy the longer it's pressed. What happens if you keep holding it down for the full duration? You get a single credit.
- X Called; They Want Their Y Back: The Star Glasses' description says "The 70's called. They want their glasses back."
