February 2025 Dev Update

[wheezwer]

Hey everyone, welcome to the February 2025 Dev Update!

Recent Updates

This month, we released the SDNL Announcer / Bowling Physics Update and a hotfix! We hope you all have been enjoying the announcer and we appreciate feedback on how bowling physics is working out for you all.

Next Update

We’re wrapping up our 1.0 bug fixes and preparing the game for its release! Before the 1.0 release, we have a couple of updates in store and some marketing work left to do, but we hope you all are excited for Tower’s departure from early access!

We’ve listed some changes included in the next update below, but be sure to check out the changelog for more info once the update is out.

Zombie Massacre: Escape

This next update will include Zombie Massacre: Escape, a new map incorporating six different locations for some dynamic zombie survival over the course of several days.

Arcade Physics Rework

This next update will include the arcade physics rework, which will improve the feeling of physics games in the arcade and boardwalk. This will improve the throwing responsiveness for Avalanche, Milk Jug Toss, Little Birde Feeders, Ring God, The Offering, Ice Cave, and Roll & Race.

Also, Pluck-a-Pal’s capsules have returned to help prevent prizes from getting stuck!

Bowling Fixes

Based on your feedback and our testing, further improvements have been made to bowling in order to improve the experience, so expect less desync issues in this coming update.

Graphics Profiles

In the next update, we added graphics profiles to quickly adjust your game graphics using our recommend graphic defaults. We also made versions of this for Steam Deck and VR.

Condo IO Networking Improvements

The next update will also have some major Condo IO networking improvements, which improves networking IO connections to players who join your Condo. With this change, we have decreased the amount of bandwidth required to load in a new player substantially!

Various Other Requested Fixes & Optimizations

Next update as well addresses many other bug fixes such as scoreboard sorting, ping display issues, Plaza optimizations, soft-locks, UI bugs, Condo editing features, inventory bug fixes, and Game World bugs. We’ve also revamped a lot of the main UI, such as the settings menu, inventory menu, and more!

New Item Store: Kalarry’s Wares

And lastly for the next update, we’re adding a much demanded store that contains milestone items, Game World props, and a few other goodies.

What’s Next? 1.0 Wrap Up

We have plans for another small update before we release Tower out of Early access, which will include further improvements to the game and 1.0 polish.

Trailer & Workshop Map/Condo Submissions

We sent out some info on Discord to keep people in the know for when we’re going to be recording trailer footage! Join the #trailer-volunteers channel on our Discord to get notifications if you want to be in trailer shots with your fellow TU players.

We also sent out a call for people to submit their Workshop builds which they believe would be great for us to show off in a trailer or screenshots. Check out the submission form / guidelines here.

For those who have submitted your maps and Condos already: thank you! We’ve been very impressed with them so far.

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March Calendar

The March TU calendar will be uploaded to our Discord in the next few days, so keep an eye out for it there!

Art Contest

Our TU art contest ends on February 26th, so if you want to submit anything, be sure to check it out!

That’s gonna wrap it up for this Dev Update, so see you all in the next one and thank you for playing TU!

-wheezwer

<3 PixelTail Games

[wallygraham]

WAIT, KALARREY’S WARES??? So we’ll officially be able to get like multiple blood moons???

[Alexman]

will the price of the game change when its out of early access?

[Acejinjo]

Graphics Profiles sounds interesting!
Will use Steam Deck as my default for the console experience lol
And less modifying for me whenever it’s Summer or Winter. (Don’t want my PC to overwork when it doesn’t need to.)

[yoshiex26]

@wheezwer

New Item Store: Kalarry’s Wares

And lastly for the next update, we’re adding a much demanded store that contains milestone items, Game World props, and a few other goodies.

Few questions.

Does this mean we can now “officially” give us multiple milestone and not have to rely on it randomly duplicating the milestones when we get them sometimes.

Also is the shop going to function how the upgrades shop is where we need to hit a certain achievement, in this case, the milestone requirement to buy them or are they just able to be bought at anytime if you have the money.

[macdguy]

The store contains a few placeable milestones, such as the turret. You’ll need to meet the EXP requirement for the milestone itself in order to buy more of them. They are clones of the item, exactly the same but new items completely, so you can safely have as many as you want and refund as many as you want and you’ll always have the original milestone item.

As for equippable milestones, currently Kalarry doesn’t carry them, but can in the future! She also will have other various items like SDNL weapons for use in Plaza/Condo, starting with the Bullpup.

[nephco]

So, the prestige of achieving the milestones will be reduced by players being able to buy, for instance, milestone equipable weapons without completing the necessary experience level? I am unclear why someone would want to buy duplicates of milestone equipable weapons if we can’t even dual wield. It feels like you are watering down the exclusivity of special items in the game. Having pride in your efforts to get exclusive items is part of many beloved games. Not everyone is skilled enough to get them all.

The only way I can see how buying milestone weapons, for instance, is useful, is being able to place them in your condo. We have been asking for placeable weapons for a very long time. Dressing out our armories and military style environments.

I am just disappointed that there are plans to take away exclusive items that we have earned through playing the game. I was already personally disappointed that the Halloween collection challenge was nerfed after the efforts I put into completing it.

[Nuclearxpotato]

You still need to reach the exp requirements to be allowed to purchase the Milestone dupes.

The original Milestones will still exist in your inventory and will still be rewarded when achieving their exp threshold, Kalarry’s store exists merely to allow you to own extra copies of your owned Milestones; unlocking the Trivia seat allows you to purchase enough for an IO game or unlocking the Typing Derby Horse pet lets you purchase a squad.

Certain Milestones will also not be open for duplication, such as Trophies or Weapons, since there’s not real purpose in owning multiples.

@nephco

I was already personally disappointed that the Halloween collection challenge was nerfed after the efforts I put into completing it.

The requirement for the Ghoulcery achievement was “nerfed” because it’d gotten to the point where’s it’s physically impossible for newer players to acquire all of the items needed… and it’s kinda an insane request to ask players to grind enough Ghoul coins and purchase the items within the allotted time (it made sense when there was only one or two years of items).

[DragonLord_PL]

Sounds like a great solution to the problem, thank you so much! I hope to see that get added to the game, yeah. Also, great to see Tower finally coming out in full release, even though it took like, around 11 years. I can only hope the game gets the initial popularity it had at the release back or go even beyond that!

[DragonLord_PL]

Nothing is being watered down, buddy. This is a great change, and I also think the same should be done for Patron supporter items too, but I know it won’t. Anyway, if all you can do is complain, then sorry.

[DragonLord_PL]

To be fair, we could just get decorative versions of the trophies? I know you say there is no point in having multiple but I’m not sure if I agree. Say, I would like one for my personal room in a condo and then have a copy of it for public viewing, something like that. But if it won’t happen, it’s fine by me too. Also, a note for the weapons: If, in the future, we are going to be able to give NPCs stuff to equip, then having multiple versions of same weapon milestones would be great to have. That’s only if something like this were to happen though, but I am just saying I could see a use for more weapon milestones too, at least for some future use.

[GoopGoop]

@Nuclearxpotato

such as Trophies or Weapons, since there’s not real purpose in owning multiples.

There would have been if we still had the old virus trophy head!

[macdguy]

@DragonLord_PL

If, in the future, we are going to be able to give NPCs stuff to equip, then having multiple versions of same weapon milestones would be great to have

It would work like the weapon pickup does, where it just shows all the owned items and you can select it for as many NPCs as you’d like. There wouldn’t be an item quantity limit on NPC weapons.

[DragonLord_PL]

Fair enough. Thanks for the response.