Tall Unlimited (written with "Tall" and an infinity symbol; "Tall Unlimited" is the official reading) was an action puzzle game developed and published by Techno Soleil in late 1999 for the Playstation. The suggested retail price is 3800 yen. This is a Japanese "import" game; I do not know of any overseas release version. The game is obviously inspired by XI (Devil Dice in the West) and is similar in many ways, so this review will compare these two games. The bottom line is that this game is a significant improvement over XI, with the same or more depth and yet a much lower initial entrance barrier.
The objective in Tall Unlimited is to build a tower, of which circumference is made up of 18 blocks on each floor. Each block is a square, with its four sides colored red, blue, yellow and green in clockwise order, if they are colored that is. A block may have all four sides colored, or it may have any two or three sides colored, but the colored sides are always in the same relative positions. For example, if a block is colored blue and green only, the colors are always on opposite sides.
+-----+ +-----+ +-----+ | R | | R | | R | |G B| |G | | | | Y | | Y | | Y | +-----+ +-----+ +-----+
The player can walk freely around the top of the tower; he can climb any height by walking on vertical cliffs. By pressing the "hold" button, the player can roll the block under his feet as he walks. He can roll a block up one floor (but not a higher cliff) atop another block, but only if he begins running (rolling the block along) from at least one space away. (This means that he can't lift a block out of level ground, or out of a completed floor.) Some blocks are marked with an arrow, and these can only be rolled in one direction.
In order to build the tower, the player makes more blocks by rolling a block such that one of its sides meet the same-colored side of another block. (I'll call this "contact" for short.) If the two blocks in the contact are touching vertically, the lower block turns colorless, and 2 new random blocks are generated between the two blocks. (The new blocks push the upper block upwards.) If they are touching horizontally, the block which the player is not rolling turns colorless, and 2 new blocks are generated below each of the two blocks, for a total of 4 new blocks. (The new blocks push both contacting blocks upwards.) As we can see, one gets more new blocks with a horizontal contact, but there is the drawback that the colorless block gets pushed up instead of being buried by the generated blocks: letting colorless blocks accumulate along the top of the tower can lead to trouble. The player can roll a block through a contact position without generating new blocks by holding down the "hold" button, since contact is checked only when the "hold" button is released.
+-----+ +-----+-----+
| | | | |
| | | R| X |
| R | | | |
+-----+ +-----+-----+
| | | | |
| ? | | ? | ? |
| | | | |
+-----+ +-----+ +-----+-----+ +-----+-----+
| | -> | | | | | -> | | |
| | | ? | | R|R | | ? | ? |
| R | | | | | | | | |
--+-----+-- --+-----+-- --+-----+-----+-- --+-----+-----+--
| R | | | | | | | | |
| | | X | | | | | | |
The normal game consists of 8 stages. To clear a stage, the player needs to complete 10 floors of the tower. A floor is considered complete only if the player fills all 18 spaces around the tower. There is a "borderline" timer which ticks off as the player is working. Each time the timer completes a cycle, the borderline raises by one floor. The borderline starts each stage at floor -5, and if it catches up with the current height of the tower, it's game over. The speed of the timer depends on a number of factors. The most noticeable factor is the "step" count (the number of times the player has rolled a block in the current stage), so the player should avoid taking useless steps excessively. When the player clears a stage, he gets some bonus points according to his performance, and then he continues into the next stage with the same blocks that are left over (including any bonus blocks which are due).
It is difficult, if not impossible, to outrun the borderline merely by matching colors and generating new blocks. In order to survive (and to get a good score too), the player needs to make chains. This is done by making multiple contacts in quick succession. The most important effect of chains is that every even-numbered chain step lowers the borderline by one floor. The player also gets more points, and when the chain ends, some number of bonus blocks are generated according to the size of the chain. These bonus blocks are always generated at the lowest spots, which is a very convenient benefit.
To adjust the orientation of a block, the player rolls it up atop another block and rolls it back. (Rolling down first also works.) The block rolls onto the other block (rotating 180 degrees in one step), but it falls down without extra rotating on the way down (rotating the usual 90 degrees in one step), so it gets turned a net 90 degrees when it returns to where it started.
In the rare case that the player gets stuck in a position in which no blocks can be generated (for example, if all colored blocks are sandwiched between arrow blocks), he receives two reinforcement blocks with which to continue playing. (Contrary to what the tutorial claims, this does not result in game over; it is probably because the designers consider that unreasonable, should bonus blocks appear in bad positions and lock up the arrow blocks.) If the player manages to level the top of the tower completely, he receives a "ring bonus" of 8 bonus blocks. (But this rule is hardly of any practical importance, for the ring bonus is seldom worth going for, and it doesn't award any score.)
Besides the normal game with three difficulty levels, there are also the time attack game in which the player tries to complete a single stage as quickly as possible, the endless game in which the player keeps building stage after stage until he loses, and the puzzle game in which the player tackles some fixed puzzles. All game modes are one-player only. The normal game takes about half an hour, and offers a nice ride with a good balance between moments of tension and moments of relaxation and recovery, while the time attack game takes a few minutes, and is a nice convenience when the player is under time constraints.
Readers who have played XI must have noticed that there are many similarities, such as the basic movement mechanism of rolling a block under one's feet and the chain system. In fact, the chain scoring system is similar too. Because the chain system is essentially the same, Tall Unlimited offers much the same type and amount of depth as XI in the chain element. One difference is that since in this game blocks are generated instead of eliminated in the middle of a chain, it is possible to make use of newly generated blocks in the later chain steps. This unplanned element puts a bit more weight on quick wits (although both games are demanding on this aspect anyway to begin with, since one doesn't really plan long chains completely before starting off).
The biggest difference between Tall Unlimited and XI is that one rolls 2-dimensional blocks along a 2-dimensional surface in the former, while in the latter one rolls 3-dimensional cubes around on a plane. In Tall it is rather easy to visualize what orientation a block will be in when rolled to a certain spot, but in XI it is often difficult. The primary methods of adjusting the facing of a block are very different. In Tall one rotates a block by 90 degrees by rolling it up or down a floor. But in XI, adjusting facing involves rolling the 3-dimensional cube around both dimensions of the playing field, a process of which results can sometimes be, may I say, unpredictable. While some players may prefer the complicated 3-dimensional rolling in XI, to many players, including myself, the basic mechanism in XI creates too high an entrance barrier to the game, and it turns the game into a chore. Because it is difficult to visualize cube rotations in XI, in order to become good at the game, one would probably need to memorize 'standard' sequences of moves and their results. In Tall, there is no such hassle. Block rotations are straightforward, and the player can get the hang of it in a short while. This allows the player to move on sooner to more interesting and satisfying things such as chains. I feel that Tall is the better game, because the interesting task of plotting moves and chains is more accessible to the player. XI involves too much struggle, especially initially; it takes too much work before the player can begin to plot anything. Tall has got it just right; XI has got one dimension too many.
Close inspection of a number of details reveals that Tall Unlimited is indeed a well-designed, carefully-balanced game with great strategic depth. The game play is filled with interesting strategy decisions everywhere, going beyond the mundane task of manipulating block rotation. The vertical dimension of the playing field allows peaks and valleys to be created during play, and this creates a good variety of situations which the player needs to deal with flexibly. For example, if a section of the tower is a lot lower than the rest of the tower, the player has several options for filling the pit: he can try to make large chains at where he is so as to create bonus blocks, thus saving time since he does not have to relocate himself; he can try to fill the pit manually by dumping 'bad' blocks (colorless blocks and arrow blocks) into it; or he can roll good blocks down into the pit and try to build in there. There are three basic techniques for making chains: 'planned' chaining using existing blocks, 'quick' chaining using newly generated blocks, and 'blind' chaining as a last resort when the player can't quite figure out how to continue the chain (in which situation it is better to "do something, just anything" in the hope of getting lucky, rather than stalling and letting the chain expire with certainty). The player needs to apply these techniques flexibly in a variety of situations in order to become good at the game. Making the "step" count the largest factor affecting the speed of the borderline is a brilliant design. The balance here is just right: the player can afford to waste a few steps occasionally (especially at blind chaining opportunities), and sometimes it is better to roll a block around a bit and inspect the possibilities rather than to ponder fruitlessly for too long, but excessive purposeless rolling is not a viable strategy. Another fine detail of the design is that whenever contact is made, the block which the player is rolling (and which he is standing on usually) is always raised and is never changed to colorless. This keeps the player in control of the game: raising the block tends to open more options for the player (since block rolling is blocked by higher neighboring blocks), and not changing or eliminating its colors keeps chain building reasonably easy, for the player can make a chain by keeping on rolling the same block into planned contact positions, as long as he has set up or spotted those positions beforehand.
The concept of generating new blocks, emphasised on the package for its being constructive building rather than elimination, goes beyond being a mere gimmick and indeed adds solid substance to the game play. Besides sustaining the technique of quick chaining, in barren environments generating new blocks has the crucial effect of making new material for the player to work with, thus 'keeping the game moving'. Yet since generation in itself does not effect contact (if a block happens to be generated in a contact position, the contact is not actually recognized unless either block is rolled away and then back), it is rare that a planned chain gets disrupted because of bad luck in block generation. (The planning error of forgetting that the blocks will be rising is of course another issue.)
The scoring system works well: it is a faithful representation of the player's skill, including (and especially) in the normal game, which has a finite end.
The tower is viewed from an angle above its top. The graphics are functional, and they are quite pleasant too. There are five pieces of basic BGM, and the player can choose to have his favorite piece played throughout the game, or to have one selected randomly for each stage. The music is good, and is in harmony with the mood and theme of the game. The player character takes the form of either a "gentleman" with a silk hat and a stick, or a "lady" in a skirt with a large red ribbon on her head. The idea of the design probably came from the labels on the doors of public toilets. There are three other characters which can be unlocked by fulfilling certain conditions. Block colors are a language anyone can read, so there is no language barrier. There is an on-line tutorial which adequately explains the basics of the game, but the game is straightforward enough such that not being able to read the Japanese text in the tutorial presents no significant obstacle, especially since this article has covered some of the points in there. (All the menus are in English, except for the menu inside the tutorial.)
One thing which Tall Unlimited lacks is a multi-player mode. That being said, it is not very easy to suggest how a meaningful multi-player mode can be implemented while preserving the depth of the game. Even a simple time match, with the same blocks being given to both players, is not much more meaningful than having the players play separate games sequentially, because in this game the locations where new blocks are generated depend on the player's actions. Personally I weigh the depth (intellectual playability) of a game above the possible number of participating players, and I'd much prefer Tall Unlimited to a shallow or chaotic game with multi-player modes.
Tall Unlimited is probably the best one-player puzzle game (the type in which blocks or similar objects are dropped, moved around or manipulated) currently in existence, on any console. The game play is very captivating, for it goes beyond simple pattern recognition or speedy controls, and involves some deeper strategies. It doesn't rely on mechanisms which are hard to grasp, so the initial entrance barrier is very reasonable. Although the game is inspired by XI in many ways, it is definitely not a cheap imitation, but rather is a vast improvement, and a valuable one. This game is highly recommended to puzzle-game players, including both players who like XI, and (especially) players who think that there are some interesting concepts in XI but find the game practically too hard to pick up.
Update note: The sequel, Tall Twins Tower, has been released. It is definitely improved over the original, so I'm now recommending the sequel over this one.
Copyright 8 May 2000 Alan Shiu Ho Kwan
Alan Kwan / tarot@netvigator.com / created 8 May 00