A cool concept that's marred by a kneejerk moderation team, enabled by a community of crybabies.
Just play VRChat instead.

Great fun if very dysfunctional and missing features, there's still many basic things that haven't been added as props to use in building.

Seeing as the game has went 1.0 (my thoughts on that to follow), I suppose I ought to finally write a review, considering my time spent in the game. There's going to be positives and negatives.

TLDR: I definitely recommend this game. (PS: Teens & up, it's NOT for kids.)

I'll break this into sections.

All thoughts are as of June 2, 2025, some issues may have been fixed if you're reading this in the future.

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First off, it's weird how "underground" this game is. It's literally the perfect game for like a community night for streamers to play with their subscribers. I know there's like 0 advertising, but even word of mouth. I tell people and they seem disinterested, yet the ones that do eventually try are like "this game's awesome!".

The game itself offers a lot... like.. a LOT. I honestly don't even know how to describe it exactly. Even the trailer is overwhelming for people to watch. The best way I could describe it is to imagine Second Life had been developed into a GOOD game, and then bolted on all of your favorite classic online multiplayer games.

It may look like it, but it's NOT a kids game. You could like load up mini golf with chat turned off, or ball race, etc, and let your kid play, but I wouldn't advise letting them free roam on their own.

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When I first got this game, a couple buddies and I would play some mini golf in it, do some bowling, ann the hit the casino for a bit. That was basically it. I never really saw the need for "pretend houses" on the Condo building side of thing, as I wasn't giving it much thought. It wasn't until Mac put out the LibRetro update with emulator cabinets in game that it caught my attention, and after that, condo building was more my focus. I wound up first building something on each available condo, and now I basically only build new condos on the empty Smooth Dirt map. I've built multiple theaters & arcades, an amphitheater, and even have a few other basically perpetually WIP condos with a museum and an theme park. There's a low of garbage and NSFW stuff in the player condo list, but seek out the gems as there's some quality condo builds to be found. There's of course my condos, but others to keep a watch for are community events, such as The Tower Hub's community doing something, or Studio Mercy hosting an in-game concert. As for just checking out condo builds, anything by Baby in a Pipe will melt your brain, and GoopGoop's level of detail on her builds is unmatched.

I don't so much "play" that much these days as I do host my condos for the Tower community to enjoy, but Tower is still my favorite online game as of writing this.

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The Team: The team behind this game are good folks that communicate and listen to their players in order to make the game, and are also good about addressing bugs in a timely manner (for the most part). Mac & his team are constantly working on this game. Most game devs would have burned out years ago and moved on to something else, so you can tell they actually care about the game. Devs that care are crucial for a game's longevity.

Value: The fact there's no microtransactions is an appealing concept, with (almost) everything obtainable with just the initial purchase of the game. This factor also appears in the negative section.

Activities: There's a LOT to do. Kart racing, mini golf, monkey ball, movies, arcade games, carnival games, a casino, a night club, pool... I mean whatever your gaming needs, you're basically covered with this game.

Community: The community for the most part is far less toxic than most online social communities you come across in games. There's also a lot of creative condo builds to check out.

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The Team: The team being small means that things do take a bit longer, and at times when multiple projects are being worked on they can be spread rather thin. Larger projects like the dedicated condos or VR support will take considerably longer than other games.

Activies: As stated, there's a LOT to do, but that also means there's a LOT to work on. As I stated, the team loves their game, which means they have a lot of ideas. The problem with that is many aspects remained in an "unfinished" state because their attention was drawn elsewhere before completing them. Some examples of this would be a need for some additional arcade cabinet types for LibRetro emulation, the mover system being like 3/4 complete in what it can do, and the MIDI player system desparitly needing some new instruments. These things wound up kind of going unfinished because boardwalk games got prioritized, then bumper cars came along, etc. It's a little frustration if one of your favorite systems in the game needs a bit more work while you watch more and more content get added.

Community: Yes, the community overall, like 90% of it, is chill. But it's an online social game, so you're still going to come across random squeakers who think it's cool to yell the N word, or people who are just garbage in general. It's policed pretty well as far as the public Plaza areas go, and they do moderate and issue bans, just know it's something you'll most likely encounter, especially when going into Player Condos, which are user-hosted and not monitored by PixelTail unless they're directly reported. Condos can have some very NSFW things in them.

Value: This is where my opinion gets hated on. I don't agree with the "no microtransactions" policy. In a game where there's an online social public area, it's not a viable long term setup, since PixelTail has to pay to run those servers. You think GTA Online would still be up 12 years after it launched if they weren't selling people shark cards? Companies need cash flow to operate servers, and if your only income is the initial purchase, that's not going to last forever. I get there's a supporter pack, and now a second one. Will there be a third? and a fourth? Will it end up looking like the Sims 4 where it's the base game and like 30 supporter packs? Those are only purchased by people who own the game, so why not let those people who already have the game and want to support do so regularly? My suggestion was straight up unit packs, no exclusive paid items, just buy some funds if you don't want to grind. Hell, even a simple $5 a month Battle Pass or something, which could also be useful for people who maxed out their XP in areas, where gained XP goes to their pass rewards, which could be bonus units.

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I honestly love this game. There's so much you can do with it. That said, I have some concerns over decisions made with the 1.0 release. I'm sure they had their reasons for doing it when they did, but man that was the worse timing. People's first impressions of the game shouldn't have been the Plaza during Anniversary mode. We all know how sketchy even a half full Plaza runs when there's 3 character visits, and egg and catack hunt, pumpkin blast running and x-mas presents all over all at once. I fell like they should have ended Anniversary before going 1.0. If you played during that and bailed, try it now that it's back in normal mode.

I also think 1.0 should have waited until systems that people interested in this type of game would want were completed, such as Dedicated Condos & VR Support, and the Workshop Rental Store to show off what the game can do on the condo side of it.

I still definitely recommend it.