Tangle Tower

I loved playing Tangle Tower. It was such a neat tiny point and click adventure with a lot of charm and personality. It looks to me like a modern take on the classic Monkey Island/Lucas Art formula. Detective Grimoire could be considered somewhat alike to Guybrush. Combined with his sidekick Sally, they make for a funny duo, Sally doesn’t give Grimoire any rest. The game is somewhat whimsical, the animations are gorgeous, the character and their design well thought out. The soundtrack is an absolute banger, it really had no business being as good as it is. It is charming, so very much so. The puzzles are not hard and if you get stuck, the game will give you enough hints to get through. The mechanics are actually pretty nice so it never feels impossible to resolve by cheer luck as the older point and click adventure sometimes do. They give you a framework in which to work on the hypothesis, and I feel it’s a nice compromise.

Tangle Tower was developed by the creators of Crow Country, which was a hit, although Tangle Tower is older than Crow Country, from 2019.

The series, because yes, it is a series, goes back a long time, which is impressive on many levels. Detective Grimoire started out as a Newground game! I do believe this first adventure of our good detective has now been lost to time and to the death of flash player, but it is also not important in the overall story: it is not canonical. Detective Grimoire – Secret of the Swamp is where our detective’s adventure begins, in 2014. And the evolution that happened between Secret of the Swamp and Tangle Tower is pretty impressive. Absolutely massive. There is something so joyful in seeing an art style getting perfected, the writing getting better, and the whole thing coming together better than the first game ever suggested.

The Voice Actors did such a great job too through all of the game. I’ve played through it several times, and somehow it still does not get old.

The only thing I regret is the absence of reaction from Grimoire and Sally when it comes to elements from the first game. The ending of the game can also be weird if you haven’t played the Secret of the Swamp, since the existence of cryptics is suddenly brought up and it can feel a bit jarring to the rest of the game.