Game Retrospective: The Year of Dark Tower

After my parents divorced, I spent summers and holidays with my dad and stepmom for several years. Since my dad lived in an Atlanta suburb and I lived with my mom in the northeast, I became an early frequent flier. 

Air travel was different in those long-before-9/11 days. I’d travel alone on a two-hour flight, usually on the long-defunct Eastern Airlines. My parents could drop me off and meet me directly at the gate, past security. 

And I got personal attention from the flight attendants, who ensured the unaccompanied minor ended up exactly where he was supposed to go (with a new pair of plastic Eastern Airlines wings pinned to his chest). 

So flying wasn’t nearly as stressful as it is today; my trips always seemed like a grand adventure.

Heading off to another household in either direction meant I needed to haul along all the necessary stuff to support whatever my latest hobby was. Some years, that meant packing all my D&D books or a bunch of record albums to play on my stepmom’s old clunky stereo system (on the lowest possible volume, of course). 

But I have a distinct memory of one year when I traveled from one place to the other with my latest prize possession: the Dark Tower board game. I bet all of my various parents had memories of that year too – a constant cacophony of begging them to play the game with me (please, please, please, oh please, just ONE MORE TIME!)

Dark Tower is a legend for board gamers – a fantasy experience that, though simple in its core mechanics, felt evocative and immersive in the way a good D&D session did. The centerpiece of the game was the tower itself, a buzzing massive piece of electronics that consumed D-cell batteries to spin interior cylinders and light up. In a family board game world full of garbage like Monopoly and Life, it was another beast entirely.

The game’s dramatic electronic fortress was like a miniature version of Sauron’s tower in Lord of the Rings. In my middle schooler’s imagination, it radiated menace, mystery, and evil. (This amazing TV commercial for the game, featuring none other than Orson Welles, best captures it.)

Return of the King

So when the Return to Dark Tower Kickstarter launched in January 2020, I was thrilled. Here was a worthwhile reboot, the triumphant return of a childhood favorite – fully retooled for cooperative play, my preferred style of big-budget board game.

I was ready to go all in until I started to dig a little more. The new game was being made by Restoration Games. I owned one of their other products, Fireball Island, another reboot of a classic board game with mechanical elements. 

I’d been disappointed by Fireball Island. The components had been mediocre; further, the game mechanics were not particularly interesting for the degree of fiddliness involved. I’d gotten it out a couple of times with the family, and it had moments of fun when marbles would tumble down from the island’s volcano, but it mostly sat on my shelf gathering dust.

Mechanically, too, the description of the new game concerned me. The tower seemed much less important; instead, much of the game’s core functionality was driven by a mobile app that communicated with the tower via Bluetooth.

The more I read, the more worried I grew that the magic of the original was lost. In the end, balking at both the design and the price, I skipped the Kickstarter.

But as time went on, I kept an eye on the campaign. The Kickstarter blasted through its goals, eventually raising over four million dollars. Apparently, I wasn’t the only one with fond childhood memories ripe for monetizing. 

Then, as with so many other board games at the time, the pandemic threw a wrench into the production schedule. Production delays piled up; delivery dates came and went.

Despite all that, when Return to Dark Tower finally shipped, the reviews for the game were great. People praised the high production values, the excellent rulebook, and the elegant design. 

The pandemic came and went, and I would sometimes stumble across overpriced copies of the game for sale on the secondary market. Of all the Kickstarters I’ve skipped, Return to Dark Tower was the one I most regretted. My inner child wanted to murder me.

Take my Money, Please

So this time, when Restoration Games did a campaign for a second printing of Return to Dark Tower on Backerkit, I didn’t take much convincing. My wife Shannon finally pushed me over the edge. “You have to get in on this,” she said. “You’ll regret it if you don’t.”

Last Friday, a giant box, nearly twenty pounds, landed on my doorstep. I unpacked all the bits and bobs, downloaded the required app (still not my favorite part of the new design), and put batteries in the tower – no more giant D-cell batteries, for the new version takes three double-A batteries instead.

I’ve played several games to completion now, and I’m happy to report that it’s amazing. Veteran designers were involved in the production, and it shows. The game progresses cleanly and easily, with minimal fuss. Play is so smooth that by the second game, I only needed to consult the rulebook to remember what the scary red tower glyphs indicated.

Moreover, it’s fun. The move from competitive to cooperative feels right. (A competitive option is included, more for nostalgia’s sake than anything, but I haven’t tried it yet.) 

The mechanics are tight. Instead of a relatively leisurely stroll in one direction around the original game’s board as players searched for keys and slowly became more powerful, the new design has the heroes constantly scrambling to all corners of the four kingdoms, solving quests, fighting monsters, and keeping the darkness at bay.

And the tower, though mechanically different, is still glorious and evokes the feel of the original. Gears whir as interior mechanisms rotate – but instead of showing you secrets, plastic skulls tumble out of its openings, skittering across the board. Ominous red lights flash; sinister electronic sounds beep and buzz. The tower is as integral to the overall experience as it ever was.

I have a few minor complaints about the mechanics. The base game is easy to beat for an experienced gamer, though there are options I haven’t explored to make the game more difficult. The end of the game can be anticlimactic; if a group is properly prepared, the final fight is trivial. 

And while the miniatures are amazing, part of me misses the chunky, cheap plastic buildings of the original, which fit securely into the board with tiny plastic pegs. The new beautiful but lightweight buildings tend to get knocked around into different spaces, though I imagine the optional neoprene game board – an add-on I did not buy – would help with that.

Still, these are the complaints of an experienced middle-aged game designer, not a twelve-year-old boy. My inner child is beyond thrilled with his new toy. I’m transported right back to those heady days of summer, playing with my family around a small kitchen table, fully immersed in a fantasy world for an hour or two.

Happiness is an Electronic Tower

Restoration Games struck gold with Return to Dark Tower. The campaign on Backerkit for the second printing raised an additional two million dollars on top of the four million from the original Kickstarter. 

I looked it up, and the original game was not cheap – retailing for $55-60 when it launched in 1981, comparable to the retail price of the new game in today’s dollars. These days, expensive board games are a staple of the hobby, but back then Dark Tower was unique.

My old Dark Tower game is lost forever – long gone to some garage sale or trash bin after one of the many moves my parents made over the years. But as I behold the still-menacing tower in the center of the new game’s board, I’m twelve years old again. 

Reliving those core memories – and re-experiencing something that approaches the emotional feeling of the original game – is well worth the price. 

Now I just have to whine at my teenage son (whose weekend days are filled with the far more enticing entertainment options of YouTube and first-person shooters) until he agrees to spend an afternoon storming the Dark Tower with his mom and dad.

(Please, please, please, oh please! JUST ONE MORE TIME!)

Return to Dark Tower is out of stock on the Restoration Games website, but is available from selected hobby retailers on Amazon. See you next Tuesday.