Gaming

Fumito Ueda's Ghost Haunts New Parkour Platformer About Scaling Decrepit Towers

Sep 276 views

Key takeaways

TALON TOWERS blends parkour platforming with atmospheric dread inspired by Fumito Ueda's design language
Players navigate crumbling towers above infinite fog using climbing, wallruns, monkeybars, and chase-evasion sequences
Developer Jan Malitschek collaborates with Quinn K. and Hyphinett; no release date announced

TALON TOWERS just announced from developer Jan Malitschek, with collaborators Quinn K. and Hyphinett on board. The game plunges players into decrepit towers looming above endless fog, built with the environmental storytelling and palpable unease characteristic of Fumito Ueda's catalog—think ICO's shadowy threats mixed with Celeste's chase mechanics.

The movement toolkit is deliberately dense: running, climbing, monkeybars, wallruns, tightrope walking, and crawling across surfaces so narrow that any mistake means vanishing into the void below. One showcase segment features a pursuing entity that recalls both Madeline's chase in Celeste's second chapter and the predatory creatures hunting Yorda. Playable bird sections add perspective shifts to the platforming puzzle.

Malitschek previously designed BETON BRUTAL, a brutalist first-person climbing platformer that shares this project's verticality obsession. TALON TOWERS has no release window—the team's following a "done when it's done" timeline. Steam wishlisting is live.

The bigger picture

The Ueda reverence is deliberate marketing, but it works because Malitschek clearly studied the pacing and dread that made games like Shadow of the Colossus memorable. Where platformers typically reward speed, TALON TOWERS seems to ask *why* these towers exist—the narrative ambiguity Ueda pioneered. Against competitors like Ori or Dead Cells, which focus on fluid combat or rogue-like progression, this leans heavily into environmental anxiety and mechanical mastery as its core tension. Watch whether the bird sections and chase sequences justify themselves mechanically or devolve into gimmickry.

LagPing's take

We're tracking TALON TOWERS because parkour platformers rarely attempt this level of atmospheric density anymore. When a dev name-checks Fumito Ueda in their design philosophy, we listen—there's maybe five games a year that genuinely aim for that kind of existential dread mixed with precise movement. This one's worth your Steam wishlist.

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View at Rock Paper Shotgun

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