Tower of Souls

Blocks fall from above and you rack up points to claw your way to the top of the tower. Tower of Souls is a puzzle that'll grab twenty minutes of your time and then never call again. It feels like a half-baked clone of more popular titles where you match symbols and build chains — only less thought-out and without the soul you'd hope to find.

On mid-90s MS-DOS, the tower is made up of a square grid with colorful pieces. The goal is simple: push blocks downward, combine three or more of the same kind side by side, clear them out, and rack up points. The game pushes you upward with just one mechanic — more rows keep falling, and you've got to keep pace. The name itself promises something mystical, something spiritual, but all you get is a basic swap puzzle with zero personality.

The controls are straightforward, which is honestly the only thing working here. The mouse runs without trouble, you drag blocks up and down, shift their positions around. But even that isn't fun — it's just going through the motions — click, wait for something to vanish, click again. The game has maybe three or four levels, then it's just the same formula over and over at higher speed. When you run it through DOS emulation, it displays in a window with the most basic graphics imaginable; the sound is nothing worth mentioning.

Tower of Souls is a textbook product of an era when every indie developer thought they could throw a no-idea puzzle out into the world. It's not bad, just pointless. Tetris already existed, Columns played better, and if you want match-three with actual narrative weight, there are dozens of better options out there. This one got lost for a reason — nobody talks about it, and nobody's missing out.

Today it's not even an interesting retro oddity. If you want to fire up a DOS emulator and have a spare moment, you'll spend longer hunting down a proper clone in your browser. Tower of Souls is like that game at the dentist's office on Windows 95 — it exists, but nobody's choosing to play it on purpose.