- Dev Diary - August - 1 September 2026
Here comes a short & sweet update on where things are at: Release dateThere's a decision on the launch date and the next update here will likely announce it - so I hope that gets you all excited! PlaytestIf you want to test the new biomes, enemies, bosses, game modes already now - and help shape the game with your feedback - ping me or just join the Discord and let me know there so I can hook you up with a key!Next milestonesAs I said previously, the next major event will likely be Steam Next Fest in October. I've decided that I won't be making any huge changes to the demo for it - mostly because I don't want too much distraction from the work thats needed for release. I'm thinking about ways to give you all something exciting for it, but I do think the most exciting thing will be to not delay the release :P That's all for today - expect the next update to be a lot juicier! /Ben
- Thank you 10,000 times! - 18 August 2026
My last game, Idlewood Outpost, shipped with 600 wishlists. Suffice to say it didn’t turn out a success - by really any definition of the word.That was less than a year ago - and here I sit to celebrate 10,000 wishlists on The Tower Must Fall. That’s more people than live in a lot of small towns. Absolutely unreal - and it feels so, so good. For anyone who knows a bit about game development and the business side - you’ll know that success is very relative. I did Idlewood Outpost on nights and weekends, so financial success was kinda irrelevant. Right now I’m a full-time indie dev, so my hopes for Tower are of course that it succeeds enough for me to keep doing this. 10k wishlists doesn’t guarantee that - but it’s a damn good milestone to have hit, it all but guarantees more prominent featuring by Steam for the release, and it keeps my indie dev dreams very much in play.So that was a tin…
- Taking things to a whole nother level!! - 6 August 2026
The State of the Tower Opening thought: I’ve been hard at work since our major art overhaul and the introduction of the new perk system. Seeing the game’s visual identity click into place has been super fun, and I feel the new perks are starting to add that secondary layer of strategic depth and choice that you’ve been asking for. Next up for me is to open the gates to the second biome - more on that below! I'm also thrilled to announce the game’s participation in the upcoming Tiny Teams event (August 6–13)! This is my first-ever participation in a curated Steam festival (meaning there’s games getting accepted and declined) so I’m really pumped for that and grinding hard to ensure the game is in peak form for the festival.Featured work in progress developments: Cloudward Canyon!!! the next biome in line!In this new biome, the meta changes completely. It forces players to rethink their d…
- Demo v 0.1 out now! New looks AND new features! - 14 July 2026
Hello Everyone! I'm back with a sneaky demo update even earlier than the promised early August! It’s a chonky one so let’s get straight into it and focus on the major things, since a lot has changed.As always, join the Discord for questions, feedback and to brag about your towers.Changelog:Performance improvements: The game should now deal *much* better with late game madness. I’ve added lots more effects and you can now build bigger towers - but the game now also tracks performance and will respond to FPS dips by scaling down purely cosmetic features. So hopefully the worst thing you’ll notice is a somewhat reduced collapse VFX. Do let me know if the game still struggles on your machine!New Looks: Blocks, backgrounds, UI, VFX have all been evolved by the fantastic Under_Silva. UI Do-Over: I’ve rearranged the in-game UI pretty significantly. Gone is the building popup - the block select…
- Dev Diary - June - 29 June 2026
I’ve been quiet for a bit. But a lot happened. Here’s the deets:The cake is not a lie!Last month I signed a publishing deal with Caketown Interactive (Cauldron, Vortica). They are a local indie publisher here in Stockholm and I’m very excited to have them partner up with me. I didn’t go into this looking for a publisher, but we quickly hit it off and I’m convinced that together we can make a better game than what I’d have managed by myself. Look(s)!I’ve been working with a pixel artist to help me level up the overall visual quality of the game - and have added a lot of dynamic effects to make the game feel more alive. Your tower no longer just “evaporates” but breaks apart and crumbles down in lots and lots of pieces. Projectiles have trails, there’s debris flying everywhere and the tower even got some inhabitants. I’m personally very happy with this direction but would love to hear any…
- Let's talk low FPS/lag in the late game! - 27 May 2026
Hello fellow engineers......might be the correct intro at this point in time given how many new players are coming in from the RCE video from last week :D But also - I need to talk a bit of actual engineering today, because of how many people report their game becoming a freeze-frame-fest once their tower reaches some critical threshold. So I'll briefly explain why that is, and why it's not fixed yet:Reasons for poor performance:The number one reason is that I've been advancing this game from prototype to demo fairly quickly, which has meant a fair bit of poorly (but speedily) written code survived too long. I didn't have some standard practices in place (for the nerds: only partial object pooling, too many unfiltered NxO situations...) because frankly it was never a problem.But I also didn't expect every YouTuber under the sun making a video about the game and folks building absurd mon…
- New Biome In The Works - 18 April 2026
Just a quick update this time as I don't want to spoil too much:I've started working on the second "biome" and mapping out all biomes for the full game. My goal is for each biome to introduce some new mechanic(s) that puts a spin on pretty much everything you've learned so far and forces you to develop new strategies. So let's see if I manage to do that! Overall work progress is very very good and the game is now at almost 40 minutes median playtime which is much higher than what I hoped for. So big thanks to all of you
- New Mechanics & Systems! - 9 April 2026
Have a look at this screenshot - how many new mechanics can you spot? Spoiler in 3... 2... 1... Ok you've been warned. Here goes: 1. FireStuff can burn now. Projectiles can burn. Enemies can burn. Oil can burn. (Oil isn't in the screenshot but also working in the dev build). Burning things can ignite other burnable things. Still debating whether the tower should be burnable too. WDYT? 2. TrapsYou can place them like normal blocks, but anywhere on the ground. They currently dont need to have any tower connection and trigger on enemy proximity. Current flavours: Fire, spikes and stun.3. PillarsMuch requested. You can put a pillar anywhere on the ground and build on top of it without any connection to the main tower. 4. FogOne of two weather effects I've built in so far. Fog clouds will roll across the screen, reducing ranged damage to anything it overlaps.5. VehiclesThere's now support fo…
- You've all seen this coming, haven't you? - 1 April 2026
Not sure about where you live, but here in Sweden the spring is just starting to leave winter behind for good. This time of year is always such a delight, with warmth, color and all the living things coming back to life.Reflecting on the inherent beauty and tranquility of this season I've made the consequential decision to pivot The Tower Must Fall away from the intense and - lets face it - bloody genre that it originated in. Why defend a tower when you could turn your enemy into a grower?Making a gardening sim has always attracted me - all the bliss of growing living things without the mess, the mosquito bites and the back pain. So with the next demo update you'll be able to turn your structurally unsound public safety risk of a tower into a beautiful sanctuary for all kinds of flora and fauna.Say goodbye to The Tower Must Fall - and welcome The Flower Must Sprawl!Thank you for your at…
- v0.04 is out & development next steps - 27 March 2026
0.04 Demo updates:New Targeting Rules: Ranged enemies attack the nearest block (radial targeting) - whereas tower weapons target horizontally only, so high weapons are no longer disadvantaged on rangeWave balancing overhauled (easier first, then harder, then much, much harder)Endless Mode: After beating the game, waves start from the beginning - but enemies grow significantly (some may say ridiculously) in powerMusic: New main track!Box art: New Steam capsule!Weapon slots are now indicated on the overlay when placing blocksPolish: Resource labels pulse when numbers changeFixes: Addressed issues with flip-flopping build menu and some crashes when many objects (particle effects etc) were spawned at the same timeIf you find issues: Report them in the Steam forum or via the links in the game menu)Next steps:This is gonna be the final demo update for a bit (aside from bug fixes). Why? Now th…
- Beta Testers needed! - 23 March 2026
The Streamer Onslaught continues!It's been an absolutely nuts week with more than one video landing per day and some from genuinely big creators like IdleCub. Could've hardly wished for a better start! But you guys also flagged some performance issues - and then my fixes added some crashes to the game :D Stuff Must Be TestedSo we gotta stop having me push stuff live without proper testing! I've set up a testing branch here on Steam - and you can join the Discord to get access: https://discord.gg/KqktFnFusM What's live now is v0.03 (yes we'll name stuff going forward, like the profezzionalz!) which has the following changes:More performance fixes. I can hardly get any dropped frames on my modest work laptop while recording the screen, so if you do get poor performance, let me know your specs please!Crash fixes. Some of you have been reporting crashes in the late game. Those should not ha…
- The Demo Is Out - 16 March 2026
The Demo Must Be Played!Today was supposed to be my first day of reaching out to streamers, but it seems like some of them beat me to it! To my absolute delight I spotted this yesterday night: There's a few more vids out there from smaller channels as well and I'm already knee deep in analysing the commonalities on stuff they enjoy, pain points, balance, etc. Spoiler alert: Everybody is super terrified of archers. Rightfully so. The Game Must Be PatchedSince I didn't really expect any videos yet, yesterday's first major patch already addresses a bunch of the issues I've seen. Here's a list of what just shipped:Content:There’s an end boss for the demo now. What the boss also ends is the viability of super wide towers. >DBugs/Glitches:Skill tree tooltips no longer obstruct clicks (also resolves the annoying rapid tooltip flickering)“Leftover” projectiles and debris from last run should no…
