Riddle Tower Review

You know what I love? Riddles. I am also legendarily bad at them at the best of times, which was why I was elated to get to try out a game chock-full of them! Here was my chance to sharpen my critical mind or fail completely and flee in shame, as Riddle Tower offers all kinds of fun, weird, and mind-boggling tasks to fry brains much smarter than mine.

The game itself is divided into two modes: the Adventure and Riddle Road. In the former, you are tasked to aid Monkey Kid (Monkid to their friends) save their father, the Monkey King (Monking?) from the top floor of a devious tower of riddles. You progress further up the tower by solving riddle after riddle, with each being harder than the last. On each floor, Monkid will offer some advice — at least most of the time, sometimes they want you to shine on your own, and you can also get two refreshable hints for each puzzle. The Adventure features four different seasons with 50 puzzles each, ranging from text puzzles to math problems and rebuses.

While you can only attempt the next puzzle in Adventure mode, Riddle Road offers an alternative source of puzzling goodness for when you are stuck on a difficult one or feel like doing something else. Riddle Road offers a “path” for each of the three main puzzle types: text, math, and rebus, featuring 200 puzzles for each. Like in Adventure mode, you can only attempt the next puzzle on the path, but each of the three can be played separately.

The puzzles themselves are great fun and often leave you pondering for hours or even days before you get the answer. Judging the difficulty is a bit hard since everyone perceives the puzzles differently and has different strategies and thought patterns. However, there were cases where the question or hints were either misleading or unclear in addition to some answers not being accepted due to being in the wrong form. “The Seven Seas” vs “Seven Seas” for example. Additionally, you are not able to zoom in or move the puzzle images at all, which could be a bit frustrating.

In terms of design, Riddle Tower is very much like a mobile app ported to the PC; the menus are simplistic, the buttons are large, and all of the content is in the middle with ample room on the sides. This is not a bad thing, per se, but you shouldn’t be expecting amazing effects or fully interactive images.

Something I do want to note about the Riddle Tower: it was made by one person who is also constantly updating it with better hints and better-accepted answers. The creator also hosts a Discord group with the sole mission of providing hints and aid to those truly stuck on the levels of the game. While I don’t know how long they will keep this up, I found the help provided (why are you rolling your eyes, I said I was dumb, didn’t I?) to be very good and more encouraging than outright telling me the answer. Their passion for their little game was admirable, to say the least!

Riddle Tower is a great game to pull out if you’re looking to kill time or want to challenge your mind. While the simplistic design may turn some away, the puzzles themselves are great and keep you on your cognitive feet! Additionally, the developer seems to be passionate about their project. This, when combined with the current price of just over £4, I say this is worth a look. Recruit your friends, spouse, gardener, or random passerby and get to solving!