Tower Up First Impressions
Tower Up has you gain floors and add them to buildings.
Will you raise the roof?
Congratulations! Your architectural firm has been selected to renovate the city’s downtown…but you’re not the only ones. To pip your opponents at the post, you need to manage your resources and carefully plan your constructions. Be careful not to leave too many opportunities to your competitors!
Tower Up Game Overview
Quick Rules Summary
On a turn, a player has 2 options.
They can gain everything from one of the three available material cards. These give you floors of various colours and may also move up certain vehicles on the tracks on your personal board.
Or start a new building by placing a floor onto an empty plot on the board. It must be adjacent to at least one other building and not be the same colour as any connected buildings. You must also be able to add one block of each colour to any connected buildings from your supply.
Then, you put a roof of your colour on any of the buildings you just added a floor to. You also move the vehicle of that colour on your personal board a number of spaces equal to the number of floors of that building.
When all 4 vehicles have passed a line on your personal board, you take an extra turn.
There are 3 random objective cards. When you meet one you take the most valuable point token from it.
How do you win?
When a player has placed their last roof the game ends.
The finishing place of your vehicles are worth points, as are the objective card points. Finally, the number of roofs of your colour are worth points and the player with the most points is the winner.
Main Mechanisms
It’s essentially pattern-building. You’re trying to cap off the most buildings with your roofs while protecting them from being covered by other players’ floors. At the same time, complete those goal cards before other players to gain more points.
USP
The USP is the amount of plastic you get to play with. Combined with the nice vehicle meeples it’s a decent price for a lot of toys in a box.
Theme
Building and city planning. It’s a light theme and I doubt you can just build an extra floor on someone else’s building and take over it in real life.
Setup
Put out the board, get the personal board set up and distribute the starting floors. Job done.
Components & Artwork
The components are really nice. The floors and roofs feel good and work well on the board, locking into each other enough to not be annoying.
The vehicles on the player boards are really fun.
Ease of Teaching
This is a very easy to teach. There are very few rules and everything is open information.
Similar Games
Obviously, building up like this reminded me of Manhattan somewhat.
I played this the same weekend I played Foundations of Rome and while that is a bit different it’s in the same area.
Tower Up Review
Positives
Fun and simple gameplay.
With just two actions and limited space, turns go along fast.
Despite that, there is a lot to consider on the board as well as the goals and bonus turns to aim for as you play.
The components are really nice, especially for the price.
The goals give some replayability…
Negatives
…but I do wonder about the long-term fun factor
Summary
A really fun and simple yet tactical game that looks great on the table.
Jesta ThaRogue
