Video Game / CookieRun: Tower of Adventures

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Legends speak of the mystical Pancake Tower, containing a new world on every floor and protected by Guardian Cookies wielding special powers. But as the threat of the Oven grows near, only a brave cookie with a shining heart will be able to save the tower.

While escaping the Witch's castle, Gingerbrave encounters the Sugar Star and is informed about his role in the prophecy. Embracing his newfound duty, he joins forces with the apprehensive Twisted Donut Cookie in order to venture through the many floors of the Tower aboard the Star Coal Train. Alongside any new Cookies they recruit to their cause, they must battle enemies and bosses alike while unravelling the mysteries of the Tower.

The game can best be summarized as a Top-Down Dungeon Crawler Action RPG complete with Character Levels and Random Drops, but mixed in with the typical CookieRun convention of heaping tons of Gacha Mechanics as well. Instead of having basic RPG Classes, it instead features fully-separate playable characters in the form of the Cookies with their own movesets and abilities. The Cookies can be empowered by upgrading and promoting them, and equipping them with Equipment and Artifacts and upgrading/promoting those too.

Cookie Run: Tower of Adventures provides examples of:

• Absurdly High Level Cap: Train Level (i.e. Player Level) maxes out all the way at Level 150, which takes upwards of six million EXP in total to reach. Players are likely to have completed the Story Mode and gotten a good chunk of their Cookie roster maxed out by the time they reach it.
• Absurdly Low Level Cap: Goes two ways for Cookie Levels. The initial max level for Cookies is Level 30, which is fairly easy to reach on account of lower-tier EXP Potions being easy to come by. However, players are able to "Ascend" their Cookies using Ascensionite to upgrade them beyond it. This sets the true max level of Cookies at Level 60, which takes longer due to the staggering Coin costs and the relative scarcity of Large EXP Poitions and Ascensionite in comparison. It's still not hard to reach by any means, but there'd still be Cookie Promotions and Equipment upgrades to contend with.
• All-Natural Gem Polish: The Crystals and all varieties of Ascensionite you collect always look identical. This is justified on account of them being currencies/resources.
• Art Evolution: Starting with the Lively Sleepless Streets update, there are more characters represented with 2D character portraits (such as Sancho Cookie and Kale Cookie), rather than only appearing as 3D models, story cutscenes, or not being pictured at all.
• The Artifact: The description of the "I won't forget!" achievement still refers to Banana-Kong as being in Story Mode 6-15, a level that was moved to being 6-8 in the Adventure Mode update.
• Awesome, but Impractical: Having a full team of Fighters. While having everyone be damage-oriented powerhouses sounds like a surefire win, this results in players missing out some of the perks of having a Tagger or Support on the team. This includes enemy defense reduction, damage buffs, healing, shields, etc. The former two specifically increases the overall lethality of the full team exponentially, giving a team with at least one Tagger or damage-buffing Support a much higher DPS.
• Bad Luck Mitigation Mechanic: It wouldn't be a Gacha Game without them, after all.
  • In the Cookie Gacha, one rare or better reward is guranteed every 10 draws. Meanwhile, an Epic Cookie is guranteed after 100 draws. If one manages to receive one of the former rewards before meeting the condition, the "pity counter" will reset back to its original count.
  • The Artifact Gacha works largely the same way. Rare or better every 10 draws, Epic Artifact guranteed for 100 unsuccessful draws.
  • While the Costume Gacha lacks a Pity system, it has the Rainbow Crystal system in its place. Obtaining duplicate Skins will grant a number of Rainbow Crystals based on its rarity, which can then be spent in the Rainbow Crystal Store to purchase any Skin of their choice/
  • There are also Cookie and Artifact Choice Gachas. These allow players to select their desired Epic Cookie or Artifact, which will be guranteed to drop after its own Pity counter reaches its mark.
• Boring, but Practical: Cream Soda Cookie's entire kit revolves around basic sword slashes, which may seem dull compared to some of the flashier attacks used by other Cookies. However, her capabaility to deal high melee damage in a wider area makes her a formidable force at dealing with Mooks and Bosses alike.
• Brainwashed and Crazy: Several of the bosses in the main story were subjected to this via the dark force of the Oven. These transformed them from their normally-kindhearted selves into twisted tyrants of destruction. This includes the Happy Flower, Cactor and Shamonkey.
• Chain Lethality Enabler: Cream Soda Cookie's "After School Sparring" passive trait boosts the damage of the next basic attack after using her Special or Ultimate. This incentivizes chaining Specials and basic attacks one after another, or immediately following up an Ultimate with a basic attack in order to maximize damage with her. Each successful chain also grants a stack of the ability, with her performing a basic attack with the highest damage when all 4 are accumulated. Her 2-Star Promotion adds a damaging wave (of water) that travels forward to the final chained attack.
• Character Class System: While each Cookie is their own unique character with their own move set, they're still categorized into one of three Roles. Each Role has its own advantages and weaknesses, with effective teams always containing at least one of each. These include:
  • Fighter Cookies specialize in dealing damage to enemies and bosses alike, being powerful attackers that one can hardly do without.
  • Tagger Cookies specialize in debuffing enemies via Elemental Tags or other status debuffs. The Elemental Tags reduce enemy resistance to attacks from a certain element, alongside adding a special gauge to an afflicted enemy. The gauge gains charge when a Cookie deals damage to it, with more given for Fighter Cookies and ones with the associated Element. When the gauge is filled, extra damage is dealt to the enemy.
  • Support Cookies specialize in supporting their allies through a variety of means. These include healing, giving them shields or buffing their stats.
• Color-Coded Item Tiers: Like its preceding games, Tower of Adventures has defining colours for each rarity: brown for Common, blue for Rare, purple for Epic, red for Super Epic and gold for Unique. Cookie rarities go up to Epic, Hidden Power rarities go up to Super Epic and Equipment rarities go up to Unique.
• Combat Medic: While many Supports usually have their only source of damage output being their main attacks, that is not the case for some of them.
  • Rockstar Cookie's Special has him perform a Guitar Slam on the ground in front of him, damaging enemies. His Ultimate creates a Damage-Boosting Area of Effect on the ground, which can also directly damage enemies if he has a full Rock Spirit gauge.
  • Blackberry Cookie's Special deploys a candlestick that damages enemies in tandem with healing allies in its radius over time. Her Ultimate summons ghosts that attack enemies, healing herself and allies in radius upon returning.
  • Peach Cookie's Special has her strike the earth and deal damage to enemies hit by it, while spawning healing Peach Dumplings. Her Ultimate has her perform a stronger staff strike and create a damage-boosting Area of Effect.
• Combat Resuscitation: In multiplayer modes, a Cookie that is slain in battle will turn into a ghost that can still move around. A living ally is able to revive them by holding the attack button while they're nearby, which brings them back with low health when the "revival bar" is filled.
• Continuity Nod: In the Dream Train in the Night Sky story, Stardust Cookie remarks that every time he gets on Milky Way Cookie's train, he's seated next to someone strange. This time he's sitting next to baby Melanchream Cookie, but it's also referencing how he had to sit next to Space Doughnut in the Stardust Cookie's Space Travels story in CookieRun: Kingdom.
• Cooldown: As typical for Action RPGs, cooldowns govern how much certain abilities can be used. Many Cookies' main attacks have cooldowns, while all Special and Ultimate skills have their own cooldowns. The Tower Arena-exclusive "Items" have them as well.
• Cool Train: The Star Coal Express is ran by Twisted Donut Cookie, who ensures it's kept in pristine condition so that the Cookies can reach the top of the tower.
• Damage-Increasing Debuff: Elemental Tags are status debuffs that can be applied to enemies and bosses by Cookies with the Tagger role, and decreases the resistance they have to attacks of a certain Element. Candy Drop Cookie is a special case where she outright decreases enemy defense, making her a "Universal Tagger" that has much more versatility.
• Eldritch Location: The titular tower of adventures, the Pancake Tower. It's a gigantic tower that reaches far into the clouds, and each of its levels is a completely different biosphere with its own environments and residents. And the only way to traverse it is by locomotive trains that run on the highly-specific fuel source of Star Coal.
• Elemental Powers: The Cookies are categorised into six main elements: Fire, Water, Wind, Earth, Light, and Dark. The seventh element, Mythic, is much rarer and counts as both Light and Dark, and can be used for modes that restrict you to either or both of those two elements.
• Experience Points: Ironically not used for the Cookies' levels, but is still used for the Star Coal Express. Collecting enough Train EXP will allow the Express to level up, unlocking new features and granting rewards.
• Freemium Timer: Being a Freemium mobile game, there was bound to be a few examples of this. Both so far are of the "Energy Meter" variety.
  • Heart Jellies are a pseudo-currency used to perform "Run Skips" in the Seasoning Dungeons. Each Run Skip costs 20 Heart Jellies, and 1 Heart Jelly is regenerated every 6 minutes. There is a maximum capacity for Heart Jellies, which increases based on Train Level.
  • Raid Tickets are a pseudo-currency used to play rewarded Raid Matches, granting Equipment and other related resources upon a win. It is possible to play a Raid Match without Tickets, though doing so grants no rewards after the run. Instead of passively regenerating over time, a player's ticket counter is reset to a flat each daily reset- unless they already have 5 or more, in which case it remains unaffected. Additonal Raid Tickets can also be purchased using Diamonds or Raid Ticket refills, or obtained from events. This system pushes players to grind the mode until their Raid Tickets are fully depleted in order to take advantage of the daily ticket refill.
    • While they function similarly, Tower Rift Tickets are actually an aversion of this. There is absolutely no way to obtain additional Rift Tickets after the daily supply is depleted, paid or otherwise.
• Friendly Local Chinatown: The Lively Sleepless Streets are a bustling Chinese-themed marketplace adjacent to a port. Mala Longxia Cookie, one of the residents, is a Hot-Blooded yet friendly martial artist.
• Guide Dang It!:
  • The game has a simple-yet-effective Character Class System consisting of the Fighter, Tagger and Support roles, and the most effective teams usually consist of at least one from each role. This is not explained in the mandatory tutorial segments, instead being relegated to an optional in-game tutorial that is easily missable. As a result of this, newbies often ended up making full teams of Fighters without realizing they were handicapping themselves. Later updates have the game give you a Player Nudge if you try to enter a mode without having an ideal loadout.
  • Elemental Tagging is an intricate debuff system utilized by the Tagger class, and is absolutely necessary for higher-level play due to the damage boost being vital to counter the increased difficulty. Once again, this is only explained in the aforementioned optional tutorial. Thus, many players only ever end up learning about it at all via the defeat message of "use Elemental Burst".
• Gusty Glade: Jolly Jelly Forest is one of these, featuring giant flowers that blow gusts of wind that blows Cookies in a certain direction.
• Gratuitous English: The game is only fully voiced in Korean. Despite this, Melanchream Cookie audibly says "Surprise!" at the start of the second phase of her boss fight.
• Healing Potion: Appears occasionally as a Power-Up in stages, which instantly heal a portion of health to a Cookie.
• Hello, [Insert Name Here]: During the tutorial, players are prompted to enter a name for the Star Coal Express. This name will serve as that player's username for the game itself.
• Lethal Lava Land: Smoldering Volcano and Searing Stronghold, which are both locations filled to the brim with lava and fittingly utilize heat-or-explosion related mechanics.
• Level Ate: Sweet Sugarland is an amusement park that appears to be made of candy, wafers, and ice cream. Fittingly, it's owned by Sundae Cookie.
• The Medic: Numerous Cookies in the Support Class revolve around healing their allies (and sometimes themselves).
  • Angel Cookie's Special unleashes a damaging beam of light, and will heal all allies if it hits an enemy. Their Ultimate merely provides a stronger full-party heal.
  • Chamomile Cookie's Special deploys a Chamomile Teapot that provides continuous healing to allies in its radius, but lasts for a limited duration. Her Ultimate creates a healing aura around her that provides healing-over-time to allies. her 5-star promotion makes her Ultimate automatically revive a fallen party member at low health.
  • Rockstar Cookie's passive trait gives him a "Music Note" gauge that fills up each time he uses a basic attack or dashes. When the gauge is full, his next Special or Ultime will gain its Rock Spirit effect. His Special's Rock Spirit effect makes it heal allies over time when used.
  • Peach Cookie's passive trait gives her a "Guidance" gauge that fills up each time she hits an enemy with a basic attack, enhancing it when the gauge is full. Enhanced basic attacks deal extra damage and spawn several Peach Dumplings. Her Special deals area damage and spawns Peach Dumplings as well. Peach Dumplings heal allies that pick them up.
  • Blackberry Cookie's Special deploys a Midnight Candlestick that continuously heals allies in its radius while also damaging enemies over time. Her Ultimate summons three ghosts that orbit around her, providing healing to her and nearby allies after the aforementioned spirits succesfully deal damage to enemies. Her passive trait enhances her Special and Ultimate every 12 seconds, making them deal more damage and heal more.
• Microtransactions: It wouldn't be a Freemium Gacha Game without 'em.
  • Players can directly purchase Crystals and Rainbow Cubes from the Shop, and spend them however they please.
  • The Shop features a large variety of "special offers" that are exclusively purchase using real money. These include various resources like Cookie Tickets and Artifact Tokens, and may even feature the aforementioned Premium Currencies.
  • The Tower Pass has a premium upgrade in the form of the Tower Pass Ticket, which will unlock the paid side of the track for the rest of the pass season. There is also a "Premium Tower Pass Ticket" that costs more but gives an instant +10 pass levels and includes bonuses (3000 Crystals and an exclusive Stamp). As usual with Battle Passes, the Tower Pass is purported to hold the highest "value" compared to other purchases made with money.
    • The "Event Passes", which are a separate Battle Pass system tied to the season's Limited-Time PvP events. They are a separate purchase from the regular Tower Passes, but are similarly exclusively bought using real money.
• Money Sink:
  • Rerolling Hidden Powers for Equipment. Unlocking Hidden Powers for Equipment requires both a Scroll of Potential and a sum of Coins (10000 to 50000), which will grant a random buff alongside an Elemental bonus (if applicable). Normally, it's a relatively affordable way to empower one's Cookies and increase their Power stat, but rerolling is more than certain to be quite costly. This is because rerolling involves using a new Scroll to enhance it again, with both the Scroll and Coins being non-refundable. Paired with the fact that the granted bonus might not be good for the Cookie it is equipped upon, it makes for a very expensive Luck-Based Mission better suited for players who have Coins to burn.
    • Even one-time uses of Super Epic Scrolls of Potential can qualify. As they cost 50000 Coins per use, enhancing a full set of Equipment for a single Cookie with those costs around as much as a high-tier Cookie upgrade.
  • The various Gachas are a surefire way to get rid of one's excess Diamonds and Rainbow Cubes. Due to them being tied to luck, players may end up burning through their stash before getting their desired Cookies, Artifacts or Skins. This is Downplayed on account of the Gachas being the main purpose of the aforementioned currencies in the first place.
• Museum Level: The Citrus Museum found in Adventure Mode can house relics that are found randomly and provide a bit of information on that chapter, or statues of enemies that are unlocked after defeating enough of that type.
• Play Every Day: As typical for a Freemium mobile game, there's quite a few of these:
  • Raid Mode is a boss hunt mode where players can spend up to 5 tickets (although they only need to play twice, as up to 3 tickets can be spent at once) to earn equipment. Players can also opt to buy extra Raid Tickets using Diamonds or Raid Ticket recharges, though some events also give extra Raid Tickets.
  • Tower Rifts are a singleplayer/multiplayer mode where either a player's solo Cookie Team or a party of friends are used to defeat a number of enemies throughout two different areas, culminating in a boss fight at the end. They require Tower Tickets to initiate, with the rewards being the abundance of dropped loot from enemies throughout the level. Exactly two Tower Tickets are regenerated at each daily reset regardless of whether the previous day's were spent. Unlike with Raid Tickets, there is no way to go above the limit.
  • The Seasoning Dungeons features the regenerating Heart Jellies, which can be used to perform a "run skip" on a completed stage from one of its four modes- Hexagon Bee Forest, Hangster Hideout, Ascensionite Mine, and Bana Bana Training Grounds. Doing so grants the rewards (EXP Potions, Coins, Ascensionite, Skill Potions) instantly without having to replay the stage, with the type and quantity based on the stage's mode and difficulty respectively. Despite what the name suggests, manually completing the stages themselves does not grant rewards except by reaching a certain highscore.
  • Once per day, a new free Daily Gift appears in the Shop. These contain a random reward such as a sum of Coins. Some events also include their own, separate daily reward tracks. The latter often have more varied rewards that are fixed, ensuring that the reward can't be terrible.
  • A fixed set of daily Tower Pass quests become available each day. These generally consist of menial tasks like spending Heart Jellies in Seasoning Dungeons, playing 2 matches in Raid Mode and completing a Tower Rift run.
  • Many regular events such as the Lunchbox Event, Bingo Event or Dice Event also include a number of Daily Quests that have essentially identical conditions as the Tower Pass ones. This means more Raid matches and Tower Rift runs.
  • Limited-Time New Cookie events have more Daily Quests that consist of the aforementioned 'Play Raids, Play Rifts" type of quest, but also throws in others like "complete any mode with new Cookie" or "complete X condition in the Limited-Time PvP mode".
  • The Heart Jelly and Raid Ticket bonzanza events similarly incentivize active play. The gist is that players get rewards for spneding a set amount of the aforementioned currencies, with the rewards refreshing every day. The Heart Jelly Bonzanza is useful for getting extra resources as more Heart Jellies and Coins are given out for spending the former, while the Raid Ticket Bonzanza practically ensures all 5 daily Raid Tickets manage to see use.
• Player Nudge: The game will warn you if you try to play certain modes without having the ideal Fighter + Tagger + Support team loadout. Ignoring the Fighter will lead to your damage output being much lower, ignoring the Tagger prevents you from getting Bursts that do a lot of damage, and ignoring the Support prevents you from debuffing enemies to increase the damage output, and getting healing, shields, and buffs that help the team survive longer.
• Rank Inflation: Your rank can go up to an S+ if you beat a level or boss with all the objectives.
• Rewards Pass:
  • The Tower Pass, which is your typical run-of-the-mill Battle Pass. Complete quests to earn Pass EXP, which progresses the Tower Pass track for both sides. Purchase a "Tower Pass Ticket" (with real money) to unlock the paid side of the track. Both sides contain a variety of useful rewards, though some are only found on a specific side.
  • There are additional "Event Passes", which works similarly to the Tower Pass but have its reward accumulation tied to the [[Temporary Online Content Limited-* Roguelike: Adventure Mode chapters work in a roguelike format. The player chooses a difficulty, has various junctions and branches to visit for which types of battles or events they would like to see, and collects Jellies they can spend on upgrades. Extra upgrades are also given at the end of rounds, with harder rounds giving better rewards. At the end, they fight a boss and get better rewards the higher difficulty they played on if they beat it. Progress for rounds does not carry over, aside from Twisted Donut Cookie's Workshop that gives upgrades persisting between chapters, and each Stellarium can be used to buy permanent buffs for that chapter.
• Starter Mon: GingerBrave is the Starter Cookie that is featured in the Witch's Castle tutorial stage. Then, players will unlock Twisted Donut Cookie and Cherry Cookie.
• Support Party Member: The Support role includes a whole slew of Cookies that are an example of this. Support Cookies can buff their allies, heal them, and apply protective shields.
• Tag Team: A mechanic used in the Singleplayer modes. Players build a team consisting of three Cookies from their collection, with only one being on the field at a time. However, they can be swapped between by tapping their icons (mobile) or pressing their associated key (PC). The Cookies' mechanics are built around this, with some Support Cookies being able to heal "benched" Cookies and Elemental tags persisting for a while.
• The Turret Master: Twisted Donut Cookie. He deploys the Donut Turret Mk.1 and Mk.2 in his Special and Ultimate respectively, which deal damage to enemies and marks them with Elemental Tags.
• Timed Mission: Some stages have bonus objectives for beating them within a certain amount of time. Boss battles also usually have timers to prevent you from Cherry Tapping them to death.
• Video Game Dashing: An innate ability that all Cookies possess, which makes them dash forward in the direction they're facing before going on cooldown. Some Cookies have their own spin on the Dash, like GingerBrave having 2 dash charges (starting from his 2-star promotion) and Frostrock Cookie having a damaging Dash Attack.
• Warm-Up Boss: Frank the Flaming Chef serves as the boss of the Tutorial stage, and is never featured anywhere else in the game. His role is to both serve as an introduction to the mechanics of boss fights and to test out what the player had learned over the course of the stage.
• Whole Episode Flashback: Most of the Burnt Witch's Oven chapter is a series of flashbacks showing Melanchream Cookie's Start of Darkness and how she escaped the oven.