- Pace82 · frantic
- A stone slides above the tower and you drop it with a tap, about one a second: it moves faster from stage to stage, the pulse climbs from 112 to 160 beats per minute, and the fog rising behind you punishes every pass you let go by.
- Difficulty69 · rather merciless
- Whatever hangs over is cut off, and the next stone is narrower. Drop a stone into the void, or let the fog reach the top, and the tower collapses down to the stage's ledge, nearly a minute lost. Three perfect stones in a row win back some width; after two falls the stone slows a little, without saying so.
- Tone85.9 · unsettling
- Three days before Halloween: the tower starts from a grave, a pale fog full of hands follows it, ghosts circle it, figures climb the stones behind you, and at the top you find out the stars are not stars.
- Story6 · silent
- Not a line of story: a title, the altitude in numbers and three words when the tower falls. Everything else is told by image and sound.
- Scale81.5 · cosmic
- You never leave the top of a single tower, but the altimeter goes from 2 metres to 4.24 light-years: the storm, the sea of clouds, the Moon going by, the curve of the Earth, the Milky Way, and then the whole Earth seen from very far away.
- Form5.5 · familiar
- The stacking game everyone knows: a stone slides back and forth, you tap to drop it, whatever hangs over falls. Nothing else to learn: each stage only adds speed, wind, then a swaying tower.
- Look95 · lush
- A lush night: a graveyard under fog, rain and lightning, a sea of clouds, a cratered Moon, thousands of stars, the Milky Way and its nebulae, shards flying at every cut and a rune lighting up on every perfect stone. Toned down on old phones.
The theme
Three days before Halloween, a tower rises from a grave in a graveyard drowned in fog. You stack it stone by stone through the storm, above the sea of clouds, past the Moon and into the stars, while a pale fog full of hands rises behind you and figures climb up the stones. At the top the tower lights up, the view pulls back, and you understand that the stars are the tops of other towers.
The mechanics
The stacking game everyone knows: a stone slides back and forth above the tower and you drop it with one tap (finger, click, Space). Whatever hangs over is cut off and falls, and the next stone is narrower; three perfect stones in a row win back a little width. Drop a stone into the void, or let the fog catch the top, and the tower collapses down to the stage's ledge. Five stages, faster and faster: wind, then a swaying tower.
Palette
Verdigris night #0b1a20 and blood dusk #4a1a22, bone fog #e6e1d3 shaded blue-grey #8fa9b0, stones of granite #6b6e70, slate #3e4855, marble #bdb7aa, basalt #2c2c36 and obsidian #1d1528, ember runes #ff4a3a, candles #ffc66b, a Milky Way in rose #e08aa0 and gold #e8c27a. UnifrakturMaguntia for the title, Spectral SC for the altimeter. Gothic, dizzying, lush.
