Tower Princess is a procedurally generated rogue-lite with some 3D platformer elements. You play as a knight with either a melee or ranged focus. The exact stats of these two knights will be somewhat random on each attempt, but base stats can be upgraded through tokens found on each run. Upgrades gained through tokens carry over into all future runs. Your goal is to conquer the castle and rescue princesses. On each venture into the castle you’ll be able to bring along a single princess. You’ll start with one, but more can be found on each run. Once a princess is found within the castle, they’ll be available as a partner for your next run. Each princess has their own unique ability. My personal favorite is the Zombie princess who is able to heal you without the need to use up rare health potions. Princesses aren’t the only characters to be rescued either. Other characters hidden throughout the castle can be recruited to grant access to new upgrades at the beginning of each run.

The castle itself will have a different layout on every attempt. You can slowly purchase upgrades from a certain shop that will reveal specific rooms on your map from the start and after many upgrades even reveal the entire map. But for the most part you’ll be starting blind every time, especially since odds are you’ll want to spend those upgrade points on your knight and their abilities. Combat, especially melee combat, is somewhat clunky. As a result I found myself favoring the ranged knight. They’re not quite as powerful to start with but fighting at range minimizes the effects of the awkward combat.

Performance and the castle itself is where Tower Princess gets dragged down, unfortunately. Certain rooms, especially in exterior areas of the castle, cause sustained performance drops. Every time an item spawns in from an enemy or destroyed object, the game freezes entirely for a moment. The castle, though random, also has an extremely limited pool of rooms to pull from. As a result, you’ll generally see each room layout multiple times within a single run. Most rooms only have one enemy layout as well, meaning that as soon as you walk in, you’ll know exactly what to expect. Given how many runs you’ll likely need to build up your character, it's disappointing how quickly you’ll see everything the castle has to offer.

Tower Princess’s underlying concept of rescuing princesses with unique abilities and teaming up with them to escape a castle is very charming; unfortunately, the rest of the game doesn’t quite live up to it. Add in poor Switch performance and a lack of room variety, and most players will likely get bored before they near the end of the castle. There are some good ideas here, but they just don’t quite come to fruition like they should.