How to play Office Tower
Build an office tower one floor at a time. Each new floor slides back and forth above the tower; tap to drop it.
Whatever hangs past the floor below is sliced off and falls, so every sloppy drop leaves a narrower floor to build on. Drop it exactly in line and it keeps its full width. Miss the floor below altogether and the round is over.
Rules
- Each floor you place scores 1 point.
- A floor dropped within 4 pixels of the floor below, about a fortieth of the starting width, is a perfect drop: it snaps into line and keeps the whole width.
- From the third perfect drop in a row, each further perfect drop widens the floor again by 6 pixels, up to the width you started with. Any drop that isn’t perfect ends the streak.
- Otherwise the part that overhangs is cut off at the edge of the floor below, and the next floor is only as wide as what was left.
- Floors enter from the left and the right in turn and swing up to 136 pixels either side of the floor below before turning back. They speed up a little with every floor until the 46th, by which point they move two and a half times as fast as the first.
- Missing the floor below entirely ends the round. Your perfect drops and your longest streak are kept alongside the score. The Expert level is 30 floors and the Pro level 60.
Controls
- Space / Enter / ↓
- Drop the floor; also starts and resumes
- Click / tap
- Drop the floor, anywhere on the board
- P / Esc
- Pause
Tips
- Watch the edge, not the middle. Line up the leading edge of the moving floor with the edge of the one below; the faint plumb lines mark where it is.
- Tap on the floor’s first pass. It slows down for nobody, and waiting for it to come back only gives your attention time to wander.
- A narrow tower isn’t lost. The perfect window stays the same 4 pixels however thin the floor gets, and a streak of perfects wins width back.
Office Tower strategy
How the speed builds
The first floor moves at 120 pixels a second and every floor adds 4, up to 300 from the 46th floor on. A floor appears 136 pixels to one side of the one below, so it takes a little over a second to line up at the start and under half a second at full speed. Floors come from the left and the right in turn, so the moment to tap always comes as the floor approaches from the side it entered.
What a perfect is worth
The perfect window is 4 pixels either way, which at the starting speed is about a thirtieth of a second of leeway and at full speed about a seventy-fifth. Anything outside it trims the floor by however far you were off. At full speed, being 20 milliseconds late costs 6 pixels, so a tower that starts 168 pixels wide survives roughly twenty-five ordinary drops without a single perfect.
Winning width back
The third perfect drop in a row and every one after it adds 6 pixels, so a streak of eight wins back 36. Width grows evenly on both sides, so the tower stays where it was. A streak is easiest to build early, when the floors are slow: an early run of perfects keeps the tower near full width for the fast floors later on.
Rhythm over reaction
At full speed there is no time to react to the floor lining up; you have to anticipate it. Each floor starts the same distance away, so the tap comes at almost the same moment after it appears, a touch sooner every floor and then always the same from the 46th. Count that beat rather than watching for the moment of overlap.
About Office Tower
One-tap stacking games became a staple of phone gaming in the 2010s: a block slides over a tower, a tap drops it, and whatever overhangs is cut away.
Office Tower is our own take on the idea, drawn in ink on paper: each floor is hatched in charcoal in its own pattern, and the only colour on the board is the vermilion of the floor still in the air.
Questions
How is the score calculated?
One point for every floor you place. Perfect drops don’t add points directly, but they keep the floor wide, and from the third in a row they widen it again, which is what lets a tower climb high.
What counts as a perfect drop?
Landing within 4 pixels of the floor below. The tower is drawn at a fixed size and scaled to your screen, so the window is the same on a phone and a monitor.
How do I play on a phone?
Tap anywhere on the board to drop the floor. There is no pause button on touch screens, but switching to another tab or app pauses the game.
Does it get harder?
Yes, for a while: the floors move a little faster with every floor until the 46th, then the speed holds. After that only your tower’s width makes it harder.
