Black Tower Enigma Review: A Charming Puzzler That Will Entice Any Zelda Fan

I love that, in a time when we're all getting excited about the new God of War game or the 300th iteration of the Assassin's Creed series, I'm here opening up a new Game Boy Color game with a real instruction booklet and game guide, just like I did back when I was a kid. Meet Black Tower Enigma, a game by Mexican-based studio Ogre Pixel. I've been checking out their Collector's Edition version of the game this past couple of days and am loving every second of it.

The game was funded on Kickstarter in just four hours, which is an incredible success story. It's also met all of its stretch goals, which include the obligatory fishing game (I love a fishing minigame).

Black Tower Enigma is currently available to download on Itch.io for a minimum of $4.99. It's also coming to Steam and Nintendo Switch very soon. As of now, there are no physical cartridges available as the game is currently being produced, but you can sign up to be notified when more physical and collector's editions are available to purchase.

What's In The Box

I've already tested the ROM of Black Tower Enigma sent to me by Ogre Pixel and had a bash at a couple of levels, but having it in cartridge form to plug into my Game Boy Color or other handheld like the ModRetro Chromatic just makes everything feel much more authentic. The cartridge is translucent with an image of the Ogre Pixel mascot on the other side which looks seriously cool.

As this is the Collector's Edition, there are a tonne of extras included for players to squirrel away into protective cases, or just enjoy like we would have done when we were kids. Ogre Pixel have included:

• A sticker of their logo
• A pin badge of Wigo the Orc
• A certificate of authenticity signed by Ogre Pixel's Director and Programmer Steve Duràn
• A CD soundtrack in a case that looks like a GBC screen (and a lot like my GBC screen, more specifically).
• Stickers
• An instruction booklet
• A strategy guide
• A physical cartridge in a protective case

The full colour box art with the Ogre Boy branding is amazing, and the same style is mirrored on the strategy guide, instruction booklet, and game cartridge, with each featuring a scene of Wigo and the mysterious Black Tower. It's all packaged beautifully and with so many amazing features. This would have blown my mind if I had opened this as a kid, and to be honest, it made me incredibly excited as an adult too!

Let's Talk About Gameplay

If you love the puzzle elements of the Zelda series from the Game Boy era right through to the Switch games, then you'll be a fan of Black Tower Enigma. It's a brain-teasing puzzler that requires you to hone in and think like a puzzle master, with a different puzzle to solve on each floor of the Black Tower.

The game sees players taking Wigo the Orc on a mission to save his wife from the Black Tower after she's mysteriously carried off there by magic and trapped there. To save her, he has to work his way through the many puzzles the Tower poses. I'll talk about some of the puzzles soon, but for now, I just want to focus on the gameplay and how it flows.

Black Tower Enigma is a colourful title that runs incredibly smoothly. There are lots of cool features like being able to change Wigo's colour by interacting with the mannequin in his house, along with an area of locked memories underneath his house.

The overworld hub outside the tower feels very much like Oracle of Ages/Seasons. You can tell that Ogre Pixel have been inspired by Zelda a lot in this game, and that's very apparent when you take a look in Wigo's house in the picture above.

One of the things I love about this game is that you get a sense of the lore of the Tower when you talk to a couple of the other characters at the beginning of the game. There's not a lot of it, but the short bit of speech allows you to place yourself in a world where the Tower has existed for a long time, rather than just discovering it at the same time as the character. It's the same kind of trick that Dragonhym uses to create the feeling of you falling into a world that has existed long before the events that you're currently experiencing.

In terms of actually playing the game, Wigo's controls are perfect, as are the cutscenes you get treated to every now and again. They're all drawn brilliantly and just help to momentarily put you in his orc-sized shoes for a little bit (even though he actually wears boots). It's one of those games where you need to check everything four times to make sure you've totally canvassed a level, and you'll need to read every book you come across to help you later in the game.

How Much Of A Challenge Is It?

Get reading, Wigo, because you're going to need all of the knowledge in the game to pass some of the later puzzles. As you would expect from a puzzler, this is a game that has some easy tasks and some tough ones, though that depends on how your brain works. I don't mind telling you that I got stuck on Floor 2: The Gambler for a little while because I just wasn't thinking properly. I know I had the guide next to me, but I wanted to try and figure it out for myself too, and it took talking it out with one of my friends to be able to actually spot a pattern that worked.

I found the answer to the puzzle in a book, though it was pretty cryptic. The answers to the puzzles are often in books, though not necessarily in a book on the same floor. When you read extracts from books, they go into a page on your pause menu, which allows you to read them back, which is a handy feature.

This puzzle stumped me a little bit too. Crows kept divebombing me and sending me back to the beginning, and I wasn't able to get any further until I picked up a book that told me that Crows were scared of Scarecrows. Once I moved the two scarecrows into the vicinity of the three crows so they were too scared to move, I could pass through to the switch unscathed.

There are 7 types of books to pick up, all colour coded and all found on bookshelves throughout the levels. It's not an action-packed, fast-paced game, but that doesn't matter - the excitement that you get when you figure out a puzzle is incredible. I like this game more than the likes of the Professor Layton games because the puzzles are, as I've said before, more Zelda-esque. They're switch-based, problem-solving tasks, rather than riddles about a cowboy riding into town on Friday, staying three days, and leaving on Friday.

Final Thoughts

Even without all the extras that came in the Collector's Edition (which really did appeal to the inner 90s kid in me, I'm not going to lie), this game is phenomenal. I spoke to Steve Duràn by email, and his greatest wish is to get this game into the hands of puzzler lovers all over the world. After playing it for a couple of days non-stop, I can thoroughly say that I understand his passion for Black Tower Enigma. It's captured me completely, so much so that I've sat down and let my friends have a go to show them what they're missing out on.

The artwork is cutesy and non-threatening, and as a gamer, you feel compelled to help Wigo save his wife and just live out a happy existence. It's everything I would want from a GBC puzzler, complete with well-thought-out cutscene moments that highlight certain feelings Wigo might be feeling, or situations that he finds himself in.

My only criticism, and the main reason that this game isn't getting more than an 8.5, is that it's too short. There are 20 floors to complete in total - I got to the top of the tower the first time in under an hour, guessed my way through to the next stage, and then completed the next 10 floors quite quickly. Yes, there are other parts to the game to complete, like finding the secret books to unlock a secret ending, but it's not something that you can sink a huge chunk of time into like Dragonyhm. Don't get me wrong, Ogre Pixel have created something amazing here - it just needs to be a lot longer for me to give it a full 10 out of 10!