The older I get, the more completely out-of-touch I feel. I suppose it’s good that I can at least identify as much, so I’m not completely oblivious to all of the things going on outside my periphery. Regardless, nothing makes me feel old quite like discovering an extremely well known Youtuber that I’ve never heard of before.

Case in point, I’d never heard of Mysticat prior to doing some light research for this post. As it would happen, she’s quite a popular Youtuber. She’s also been working on (what I believe is) a solo project called Bobo’s Big Tower, which will be the subject of today’s Demo Dive.

First up: what is Bobo’s Big Tower?

In as few words as possible, it’s Zelda crossed with Crypt of the Necrodancer. If that frame of reference doesn’t work for you: Bobo’s Big Tower is a dungeon crawler with traditional Rogue movement, and a light focus on puzzle solving. You’ll begin each journey by entering the titular tower, and will explore each floor looking for the stairs to the next, while scaling to the top.

And, just to be extra clear, I did mean Rogue, not Roguelike. Bobo’s Big Tower uses a very traditional style of movement, and combat akin to what was popularized with the original Rogue. That is, every action that the player takes counts as a turn, and every enemy will wait on you before they take their turns. It’s a style that you don’t see a whole lot of anymore, but it’s very inline with older Roguelikes and something I’m quite a big fan of.

The result of leveraging this turn-based movement system is that Bobo’s Big Tower ends up feeling very puzzle-y, which I’m absolutely here for. Almost every room featured some combination of enemies, and breakable objects. As such, combat quickly turned into a dance whereby I was breaking random objects to kill turns, so enemies could approach me, and be dispatched before they made contact. It’s the sort of thing that lit up all the switches in my brain, especially when I managed to get through a room without taking any damage.

Honestly, the whole demo put me in the mind of the Mystery Dungeon games that I used to play when I was younger. I’m still a big fan of those games, and similarly enjoyed my time playing through the demo. Though, I will fully admit to getting torn to pieces during a few of my runs while I learned the particulars of different enemy movement patterns, but that’s par for the course in these sorts of things.

I also liked how Mysticat has encouraged players to actually explore each floor of the tower by hiding both the stairs, and a key to unlock said stairs somewhere on each floor. This naturally forces players to explore each floor of the tower thoroughly, which gives them more opportunities to engage with the game’s combat, and find cash for upgrades. It’s a small thing, but it creates a nice bit of harmony between (what I assume is) the developer’s intent, and the player’s goals while playing.

Before we go, I wanted to mention that the full release of the game is slated to have several characters with different starting loadouts. However, the demo only features the first character (Bibi) who does a great job of showcasing exactly what Bobo’s Big Tower is aiming to deliver with its full release.

Also, I thought the crunchy pixel art was adorable. But I’m sure that’s not a surprise to any of my regular readers.

And with that, I think we can close the book on Bobo’s Big Tower (for now). As always, if you’d like to check out the demo for yourself then you can do so via Steam. Don’t forget to wishlist it if you enjoy yourself, or you’ve been convinced on my word alone. I’ve done as much myself since Bobo’s is something I’m keen to play more of when it releases sometime in 2026.

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