When I heard I’d only be getting 15 minutes to try Bandai Namco’s newly announced roguelite Towa and the Guardians of the Sacred Tree, I was slightly perturbed. Fifteen minutes, after all, isn’t a lot of time to fully evaluate a game, especially at an event with demos scattered in every direction.
Some genres, however, are able to show off their best attributes in a short amount of time, and as I’ve now learned, roguelites are chief among them. In just a quarter of an hour, Towa and her guardian pals made quite an impression on me, and I left that demo very interested in continuing my journey to help Towa free the world from the malevolent Magatsu’s influence.
Towa, in fact, represents one of my favorite phenomena in covering video games; before Summer Game Fest, I knew nothing about it, but now that I’ve played this demo, it’s something I want to play more of as soon as possible.