Project Tower Demo: Mighty Morphing PowerWash Simulator Prison

Two factors will come into play this Steam Next Fest: how much time you have and the amount of storage on your hard drive. Make an exception for both with the third-person shooter, Project Tower. This is something worthy of your time.

From the deliciously sounding Yummy Games, their debut title is a sci-fi shooter where you are imprisoned with the last remnants of humanity. You’re tasked with escaping the prison and encouraged to do so by your captors, as your experience through combat is downloaded to their soldiers – effectively making a super soldier prototype for their survival.

Project Tower takes all the good things from some great sci-fi titles such as Mass Effect – without all the talking and stat stuff, Death Stranding – for ominous storytelling that dripfeeds just enough to pique your interests, Gears of War – because I feel like it, and PowerWash Simulator for the inspiration behind the hero you play. That, and a cross between Pip Boy. Sorry, I’m still addicted to Fallout Shelter.

The premise is quite ambiguous, to begin with, but you don’t need to be bombarded by lore in a demo. Instead, you’re dropped right into the action, then will promptly drop your Steam Deck if following along on that. The visuals in this game are absolutely amazing on the portable – possibly one of the best I’ve seen so far, and more importantly, it’s very slick with the controls.

From a third-person perspective, you must navigate a futuristic prison populated with worm-like creatures and those that could trace their ancestry tree through the dinosaurs. Within a short time, you’ll equip a pistol with infinite ammo, though a noticeable cooldown, and then later, a lightsaber-type blade for melee combat. In the demo, there’s also another weapon towards the end.

While the pistol isn’t anything to get excited by, the fluidity of aiming, shooting, and evading works well in Project Tower, and that’s super important because this is a bullet hell. If you’re like me, you won’t be that acquainted with this in a third-person perspective, but it works great with the evade/roll move, and our hero has quite the finesse with their movement. You’d think you’d get shredded, but it’s very, very workable.

However, the real draw to Project Tower isn’t the visuals, excellent control system, or the sleek blue jumpsuit, but the morphing ability. You’ll be able to acquire a power that lets you shift into another creature with the shoulder button – allowing you to get into tight crawl spaces, perform superhuman long jumps, and even attack other enemies with fireballs. It’s incredibly cool, and the word for today is fluid.

With all this praise, you’d expect a hiccup along the road somewhere, and for me, that’s the level design. It’s varied, looks the part, and is easy to traverse, but aside from the enemies, there’s not much to do. There was a miniature puzzle to solve, though nothing was taxing. If it weren’t for the eye-popping graphics, it would feel a little monotonous in some places. However, one must remember that this is a demo and the very start of the game.

From my point of view, Project Tower is a must-play this Steam Next Fest, and it’s definitely a game that has jumped into my top ten for most-anticipated games this year. I feel like I’m mentioning this in every post of late, but 2024 has been one of the best years for gaming, and Yummy Games’ debut is currently in that exclusive club of ‘add it to your wishlist now’.