Sunrise over the skyline. A crane swings into motion, and the whole city waits for the next floor. Tower Up is a light, colourful city-building game for two to four players by Frank Crittin, Grégoire Largey and Sébastien Pauchon, published by Monolith in 2024. You share one downtown, and every building you start lifts its neighbours: lay a fresh floor on an empty plot, and each tower beside it rises by a storey of its own colour. Then crown one of them with your rooftop and drive the matching construction vehicle up your scoring track — the taller the tower, the further it goes. But no roof is safe for long: a rival can bury it under a new floor. When someone places their tenth and final rooftop, everyone else gets one last turn, and the sharpest planner wins.
🎶 The Soundtrack — Beats from the Building Site
Three long pieces, close to fifty minutes in all, keep the city moving — bright electronic textures, playful construction rhythms and soft urban beats, light enough to think over and lively enough to keep the cranes swinging.
- Rush Hour on the Skyline — Quick on its feet and light on its toes. A fast strategy groove carries an urban, skyline-high energy — busy but never heavy, like a downtown where every plot is suddenly spoken for. Made for the middle of the game, when each new floor lifts the towers around it.
- Crane Ballet — Minimal techno meets playful city jazz: a lean, repeating pulse with a wink of swing on top. Picture the cranes moving against the sky, setting floor after floor into place with clockwork patience. Precise, a little cheeky, and hard not to nod along to.
- Lights On, Top Floor — The finale. An upbeat, modern electronic score for a city that has nearly finished building itself, looking up at the skyline as the last rooftops go on. Bright and optimistic, it carries the city from sunset into night — towers lit, tracks filled, planning done.
🎨 The Art — A Toy-Box Skyline
The AI-generated artwork treats the city like a glossy miniature model, crisp and toy-like, as if seen through a tilt-shift lens. Towers are stacked from chunky floor blocks banded in white, charcoal, brick red, teal and yellow, many crowned with bright caps of pink, gold or teal, while yellow tower cranes lower fresh blocks into place and bare steel frames rise in between. Around their feet spreads a patchwork of polygonal plots — parks, fountains, ponds and white walkways, with cement mixers and tiny pedestrians in the streets. The light runs through a whole day: golden sunrise over the river, crisp blue noon, a violet dusk, and finally a night of glowing windows beneath a spired skyline.
🎬 Watch & Listen
Pick your plot, raise a floor and claim the roof — then watch someone build right over it. Let the soundtrack of Tower Up hum beneath your city while the cranes do their work, and see whose rooftops are still showing when the last one goes on.