Phaser home
Log inCreate a game

← Expansion packsArcade

Phaser AE

Drop tower

Pro packv3.0.0-3Arcade

A ball bouncing down a spinning tower of platforms, through gaps or smashing through. Two presets cover the two classic ways to play, and a seeded generator builds towers and proves each one can be won.

This is a Pro pack. Upgrade to Phaser Pro to use it in your games.See Phaser Pro →

Released October 14, 2026 · updated October 19, 2026

Drop tower: a screenshot of its demo
A note about these graphics

Expansion packs don't come with graphics. This screenshot is one way of drawing what the pack does, made for its demo: none of the sprites, tiles or backgrounds in it are in the pack.

That's by design. A pack is a game's logic, mechanics and effects, and it works with whatever art you give it. Some packs draw effects, backdrops or 3D scenes of their own, but none carries a game's sprites.

So the look is yours. Make the art on phaser.io, bring your own, or let your agent draw it in code: the same pack can look like anything.

What it does

The tower is a column of round platforms, each cut into equal sectors that are safe, hazard or gap. The ball falls under gravity and bounces off what is under it. Contacts use the ball's angular footprint, its centre and both edges, so a gap has to be wide enough for the whole ball, not just its middle. In the helix preset the player turns the tower to bring a gap under the ball and loses on a hazard. In the smash preset the platforms turn by themselves; while the player holds, the ball dives and breaks safe platforms, and a hazard under it ends the round, but released, every platform simply bounces it.

Every descent, through a gap or a smashed platform, adds to the streak and scores more than the last; a bounce resets it. Once the streak reaches a set length, the next platform breaks whatever its sectors, a power smash. The ball is simulated in fixed 1/120 s ticks, and pointer gestures map straight on: press marks an undo point and, in smash, starts the hold, drag turns the tower, and release lets go.

generateDropTower builds a level from a seed and a difficulty, then certifies it by replaying a winning controller to the bottom; the winning inputs come with the level, and hint() gives the next one during play. Medium and harder towers that could be cleared mostly by doing nothing are rejected. For an endless game, addLayers appends a freshly generated section below the last platform as the ball goes down. The rules have no renderer: draw the platforms as 3D rings, or the sector under the ball as a 2D strip.

Features

  • Two presets — helix, where you turn the tower to find gaps, and smash, where you hold to dive through and release before a hazard.
  • Footprint contacts — the ball's centre and both edges are sampled, so near misses behave fairly.
  • Streaks and power smashes — rising scores for consecutive descents, and a power smash that breaks any platform.
  • Seeded, certified levels — easy to very hard, with more floors and hazards, narrower gaps and faster spin, each shipped with a winning solution and metrics.
  • Six smash layout families — cone, hourglass, drums, corkscrew, split-sectors and alternating-bands, cycled by seed.
  • Endless descent — addLayers streams generated sections below the tower.
  • Undo and checkpoints — undo points before every landing and on each press, redo, and automatic checkpoints every few layers for "retry from the last checkpoint".
  • Hints — the certifying controller's next input, for a hint button or an autopilot.
  • Pointer controls — press, drag and release, with drag sensitivity and a cap on a single drag.

Good for

  • Tower-descent games in the style of Helix Jump, where the player drags to turn the tower.
  • Hold-to-smash games in the style of Stack Ball, with a single touch and a dive.
  • Endless one-touch mobile games, streaming sections as the ball falls.
  • Level packs with daily seeds, since every generated tower is reproducible from its parameters and proved winnable.
  • 2D or 3D presentations, from ring meshes to a flat strip.

Make it yours

A TowerConfig sets the preset, the layers and the physics: gravity, bounce speed, ball radius, the ball's distance from the axis, the fastest turn a hint asks for, the streak for a power smash, the checkpoint spacing, terminal fall speed, dive speed and start height. Each layer has a height, a starting phase, its own spin, a drawing radius, a shape (circle, square or hexagon) and 8 to 40 sectors. The generator takes the seed, difficulty, preset, floors, sector count, gap width, hazard count, spin, shape and any physics override. Pointer controls set drag sensitivity, the most one drag turns and whether presses mark undo points.

Two different games from one pack: a calm helix tower of nine floors with wide gaps, no spin and generous checkpoints, played by dragging; and a hard endless smash run of square platforms with many hazard sectors, fast spin and a power smash every five descents, streamed section by section.

A quick look

A generated helix tower played with a pointer:

const level = game.dropTower.generateDropTower({ seed: 29, preset: 'helix', difficulty: 'medium' });
const tower = game.dropTower.createDropTower(level.config, { dragTurn: 0.012 });
game.step('tower', dt => {
    if (pointer.pressed) tower.press();
    if (dragging) tower.drag(pointerDx);
    if (pointer.released) tower.release();
    tower.step(dt);
    draw(level.config, tower.state);
});

Works with

Good to know

  • The ball does not move sideways, roll or hit the pillar; contacts are footprints on horizontal platforms.
  • A platform's radius and shape are for drawing; the rules use the track radius and the sectors.
  • A generated tower has 3 to 50 floors and a tower holds at most 10,000 layers; build longer runs by appending.
  • A certificate proves one winning run from the start, not that every position can be recovered or that appended sections join winnably.
  • state returns a copy on every read, so read it once a frame.

More Arcade packs

Show all →