|
Have you played this game?You can rate this game, record that you've played it, or put it on your wish list after you log in. |
Playlists and Wishlists |
RSS Feeds![]() ![]() ![]() |
About the StoryA story of mild and non-debilitating obsession.Game Details |
News
Tags
Member Reviews
| Average Rating: ![]() Number of Reviews: 5 Write a review |
Most Helpful Member Reviews

In many ways, this game helped shape my outlook on the parser medium. It’s not about puzzles. It’s not about “Aha!” moments that come from deducing the right command to type. It’s not about deep simulation or intricate world modeling. Instead, it’s about guiding the player through a sequence of events carefully designed, above all else, to produce a mood.
Your only goal is to ascend a tower with which the player-character is “mildly” obsessed. No real obstacles stand in your way. It’s twilight, and the tower is located on a campus whose population is thinning as night falls. You’re alone to contemplate the scenery.
As a traditional short story, this wouldn’t work. There isn’t much story to tell. As a space to explore, were the game to be stripped to its bare geography, it also wouldn’t offer much. There’s a parking lot, a lawn, some empty halls, etc. These locations aren’t compelling on their own, and as I mentioned, they’re not that deeply implemented. What makes the game is the experience itself that the player has while moving through the environment.
That word, “experience,” is awfully vague, but it’s what matters. A story as the word “story” is normally understood isn’t required, perhaps isn’t even advisable, because the player’s experience is the story.
It’s the writing that does the trick here. Well, it ought to be. This is a text game. When a reader has to interact with text, move through it, move it around, this changes both what text does and what it has to do.
Not just anybody could’ve written a game like this and made it good. It’s good because Ryan Veeder’s got his finger on your pulse as you’re playing. He knows where you’ll try to go, what you’ll try to do, what you’re thinking at each step. He’s attuned to the experience you should be having, which allows him to gently guide you along and drop little surprises at the right moments. Finding a plain old quarter on the ground, for example, which you don’t even need, feels special.
Wrenlaw is another Veeder game with a similar style. I have to admit, I don’t like it as much. It tips more into modern literary melancholy, where you’ve got mundane objects and scenes, and they’re significant because they’re ever-so-slightly sad. But not too sad. Just enough to feel wistful. This sorta thing, to my taste, is like playing with fire for a writer. It’s really hard to nail. The Ascent of the Gothic Tower, however, pretty much does nail it. Gothic Tower feels more self-assured, and it’s certainly more slyly constructed. I don't think it's going to budge from my personal parser canon anytime soon.

None of this is to say that The Ascent of the Gothic Tower is not a good time. It certainly is! Veeder's mastery of the craft of interactive fiction is on full display here, with charming and well-implemented subsystems of all sorts, and an occasionally eloquent narrator-PC who has his own sort of off-kilter charm.
Playing The Ascent of the Gothic Tower feels like wandering around in a huge, empty, static palace of stone. You have no reason to be there, and no reason to keep moving forward, other than that it's beautiful, and you want to stay. And the fact that you do want to stay is a testament to Veeder's excellent craftsmanship.

You play as someone who is, in fact, mildly obsessed with climbing to the top of a tower. The tower is described in rich detail.
The game contains a sub-game that is also quite enjoyable, and which uses changes in text over time in a brilliant way.
If you like Ryan Veeder's other games, you'll like this one, and vice versa.
See All 5 Member Reviews
If you enjoyed The Ascent of the Gothic Tower...
Related Games
People who like The Ascent of the Gothic Tower also gave high ratings to these games:Quite Queer Night Near, by Andrew Schultz
Average member rating: (2 ratings)
Quite Queer Night Near is a text adventure where you need to escape a small silly nightmare by finding the right rhyming pairs to advance. How will you get beyond the bare bones stair stones and find your freedom? The game is not...
A Mind Forever Voyaging, by Steve Meretzky Average member rating: ![]() "If you can look into the seeds of time, and say which grain will grow and which will not..." --Shakespeare It's 2031. The world is on the brink of chaos. In the United States of North America, spiraling crime and unemployment rates,... |
Maze of Madness, by Lurkio/Ant Average member rating: ![]() A solvable demo of a rather cruel puzzle idea. Playable online. Written for the 8-bit BBC Micro computer. |
Recommended Lists
The Ascent of the Gothic Tower appears in the following Recommended Lists:My new walkthroughs for December 2020 by David Welbourn
On Thursday December 24, 2020, I published new walkthroughs for the games and stories listed below! Some of these were paid for by my wonderful patrons at Patreon. Please consider supporting me to make even more new walkthroughs for...
Polls
The following polls include votes for The Ascent of the Gothic Tower:Games with accurate (present or historical) settings by Emily Short
I'm looking for works in the general spirit of The Fire Tower or 1893: they can be puzzly or not, have a story or not, but they should attempt to represent a real-world setting as accurately as possible, and in some detail.
Vertical Games by Anya Johanna DeNiro
Looking for games that really explore verticality, which go up (way up) in their setting. Human-made structures in particular: towers, skyscrapers, radio antennae. Games that figuratively can make you feel dizzy, particularly after a...
I'm looking for Easter Eggs.. by morganthegirl
I'm somewhat new to IF and was wondering if Easter Eggs are ever hidden in these games as they are in others? If so, which games have them? If there a lot of them, then which ones are the "best"?
This is version 9 of this page, edited by David Welbourn on 24 December 2020 at 1:57pm. - View Update History - Edit This Page - Add a News Item