How to play Tower Builder
Tower Builder is a game for one player. A crane swings each floor of a Nepali building over the one below, and you tap to let it go. Land every floor near the middle and the building rises plinth by plinth and roof by roof to its gajur.
- Players
- 1
- What you need
- A crane, a building of Nepal and three oil lamps
- How long
- Two to five minutes a building, or for as long as the lamps last
What you build
Eleven buildings of Nepal, each built out of its own floors: Dharahara's 22 white storeys, the five plinths and five roofs of Nyatapola, Swayambhu's dome and its thirteen gilded rings, Kasthamandap, the clock tower, Taleju, Krishna Mandir, the palaces of Basantapur and Nuwakot, Kumbheshwar and a Newa house.
Each floor is a piece of the real building: a brick plinth with its stair, a storey under a tiled roof, a ring of a spire. So every building plays differently, and the shape you see is the shape you have to land on.
A floor
- The next floor hangs from the crane and swings from side to side over the tower.
- Tap anywhere on the table, or press Space, to let it go.
- It falls straight down, carrying a little of the swing with it.
- It lands on the top of the tower, or falls off it, and the next floor is hung.
The swing gets quicker and wider as the building rises, so the top of a tall building is the hardest part of it. A floor let go at the end of a swing, where the crane slows to turn, moves least as it falls.
Where a floor stays
A floor stays if its middle comes down over the top of the floor below. The top it lands on is its seat, and on a temple the seat is the narrow top of the roof below, not the wide eaves.
A floor whose middle comes down past the edge of its seat falls off. You lose a lamp, and the same floor comes back on the crane.
Perfects and the sway
A floor that lands within a few units of dead centre is a Perfect. It snaps straight onto its seat, a temple bell rings, and a pigeon may settle on its ledge. Perfects in a row score more each time, and the bell rings a step higher with each.
A floor that stays off centre makes the tower sway, more the further off it was, and the top of a swaying tower moves under the next floor. A Perfect calms the sway by almost half, so a run of Perfects keeps the building steady.
Buildings narrow as they rise
A temple's plinths are wide and easy. Its roofs get narrower one by one, and the gajur goes on a seat only a little wider than itself. So the building itself makes the game harder as you go up, with no timer.
Each building has its own rhythm. Taleju opens with twelve thin plinths in quick succession. Swayambhu ends on thirteen gilded rings, each a few units high. Dharahara is twenty-two narrow white floors where the sway decides everything.
Three lamps
You start with three oil lamps. A floor that falls off puts one out. When the third goes out, the crane stops and the game ends with the building as far as it got.
Built to the top, the camera pulls back to show the whole building, marigold petals fall, and every lamp still lit adds to the score.
To the top, or endless
To the top builds the building as it stands, plinth to gajur, and ends when the gajur is on.
Endless keeps the building's base and then repeats its floors for ever, with no top: storeys of Nyatapola, rings of Swayambhu, white floors of Dharahara. The seats stop narrowing and the crane keeps getting quicker, until the lamps are out.
A building opens on its way to the top until you have built it with the perfect score, every floor a Perfect and no lamp lost. After that it opens on its endless game, and you can still pick either. The buildings are listed with the one you played last first.
Scoring
A floor scores when it stays:
- 10 for every floor that stays.
- A Perfect adds 10 for each Perfect in the run: 10 for the first, 20 for the second in a row, 30 for the third. A floor that stays without a Perfect, or falls, ends the run.
- Building to the top adds 50 for every lamp still lit.
So the k-th Perfect in a row is worth 10 + 10k, and a building of n floors with every floor a Perfect and no lamp lost scores 10n + 5n(n + 1) + 150. That is its perfect score: 2,900 for Dharahara, 920 for Nyatapola.
The buildings
Each is drawn floor by floor from the real building, close enough to know it at a glance.
Dharahara
Bhimsen Thapa's tower of the 1830s in Sundhara, nine storeys with a spiral stair. The 1934 earthquake left two storeys and it was restored, and it fell on 25 April 2015. The new Dharahara of 22 storeys opened in 2021. Here it is 22 floors, the tallest and narrowest building in the game.
Nyatapola
Bhaktapur's five-roofed temple in Taumadhi square, built in 1702 for King Bhupatindra Malla, about 30 metres tall. A pair of guardians stands on each of its five plinths: the wrestlers Jayamal and Phattu, elephants, lions, griffins and the goddesses Baghini and Singhini. It came through the earthquakes of 1934 and 2015.
Swayambhu
The stupa on its hill west of the city. The eyes on its harmika look out in four directions, with the nose written as the numeral १, and its thirteen gilded rings stand for the thirteen stages to enlightenment. The prayer flags come down from its canopy.
Kasthamandap
The three-roofed wooden pavilion in Kathmandu Durbar Square, which the city is commonly said to be named after. Laboratory tests put it in the 7th century. It fell in 2015 and has been rebuilt. Wide and forgiving: the building to learn on.
Ghantaghar
The clock tower Bir Shumsher built in 1894, with clocks from London, rebuilt after 1934. Straight sides of nearly the same width: pure timing.
Taleju Bhawani
Mahendra Malla's temple of 1564 in Kathmandu Durbar Square, 35 metres tall, with three gilded roofs on a plinth of twelve stages.
Krishna Mandir
Siddhi Narsingh Malla's stone temple of 1637 in Patan Durbar Square, three floors of pavilions under a curved spire, twenty-one spires in all.
Basantapur Tower
The nine-storey tower Prithvi Narayan Shah built on Lohan Chowk around 1770, brick floors of carved windows under two roofs. Its upper storeys fell in 2015 and have been rebuilt.
Kumbheshwar
Patan's temple of Shiva, founded by tradition around 1392, with five roofs. Its top roof fell in 2015. Nyatapola without the easy plinths.
Nuwakot Palace
The seven-storey palace Prithvi Narayan Shah built in 1762, his capital before he took the valley. It was nine storeys until 1934.
Newa house
A Newa house of brick: a ground floor of shop shutters, carved windows, a bay window over the street and a tiled roof.
Tactics
- Let go at the end of a swing, where the crane is slowest. A floor let go in the middle of a swing carries the most sideways speed.
- Before a narrow piece (a top roof, a ring, the gajur), land a Perfect to calm the sway first.
- Watch the top of the tower as well as the crane. A swaying tower's seat moves, and the right moment is when the two meet.
- On a wide plinth there is room to spare, so use it to steady the rhythm rather than to rush.
Choices
Tower Builder has no settings to change. The game page asks two things:
| Setting | Standard | What it changes |
|---|---|---|
| Building | Dharahara, then the one you played last | Which building you build. Each has its own floors, widths and rhythm. |
| How to build | To the top, until built perfectly | Build up to the gajur, or build the building's floors endlessly until the lamps are out. |
Words
- Floor
- One piece the crane brings: a plinth, a storey under its roof, a ring of a spire, the gajur.
- Seat
- The top of a floor, which the next floor has to land on. On a temple it is the narrow top of the roof.
- Perfect
- A floor landed within a few units of dead centre. It snaps straight and calms the sway.
- Sway
- How far the top of the tower moves from side to side. Off-centre floors make it grow.
- Lamp (दियो)
- One of the three lives. A floor that falls off puts one out.
- Gajur (गजुर)
- The gilded pinnacle on top of a temple. Putting it on is how Nepal says a building is finished.
Every rule on this page is the one the app plays by. Change any of them on the game's own page before you start.