The Climb

Tower is a climbing game. You start at the bottom. You go up. There are mines hidden somewhere, and your job is to keep stepping until you decide you have climbed enough.

That is the whole thing. Everything else is detail.

A round, top to bottom

You place a bet. The tower presents you with a row of cells — usually two to four, depending on difficulty. One or more of those cells holds a mine. The rest are safe.

You pick a cell.

If the cell is safe, the tower opens it. Your potential payout grows. The next row appears above it.

If the cell is a mine, the tower opens it anyway. You lose the bet. The round ends.

You repeat this for as many rows as you want, until you cash out or hit a mine. Each row you survive multiplies your payout. Each row you climb deeper multiplies your risk.

The longer you stay, the more you stand to win. The longer you stay, the less likely you are to walk out with anything. That tension is the game.

The grid

Tower is a vertical stack of rows. The bottom row is row one. There is no last row in any meaningful sense — keep climbing and the multiplier keeps growing, but the chance of completing the climb intact gets very small very fast.

Each row is the same shape: a horizontal strip of cells, some safe, some mines. The exact ratio depends on the difficulty you chose at the start.

The mines do not move once placed. They were placed before you sat down. The math decided where they go before you opened the page. (See The Three Seeds for how that works, and how you can verify it.)

The five difficulties

Tower has five faces. Each one is the tower in a different mood.

Easy — Four cells per row, three safe, one mine. Roughly 75% chance of any single step. The most forgiving. The slowest growth. The face the tower shows new climbers.

Medium — Three cells, two safe, one mine. Roughly 67% per step. Steeper risk, steeper reward. The face most regulars settle into.

Hard — Two cells per row, one safe, one mine. 50/50 every step. The tower stops being polite.

Expert — Three cells, one safe, two mines. Roughly 33% per step. Big numbers. Short stays.

Nightmare — Four cells, one safe, three mines. 25% per step. The tower is laughing at you.

Higher per-step risk pays a larger multiplier per row. A successful five-row climb on Nightmare pays orders of magnitude more than the same five rows on Easy. It almost never happens.

The cash-out

Every safe step gives you the same choice: keep climbing, or take what you have.

There is a button for both. The tower does not press either one for you.

Most rounds end one of two ways: you hit a mine and lose the bet, or you cash out and walk with the multiplier you earned. A small minority of rounds end with a player climbing to a height that makes the operator's eyes water.

The cash-out is the only piece of skill in the game. Everything else is the math, doing what the math does. Whether to step or to stop is yours.

What the tower will not do

The tower will not warn you. The mines do not light up before you pick them. There is no pattern to learn, no lucky cell, no system. Past rounds do not affect future ones — every round is independent, freshly seeded, freshly randomized.

The tower will not stop you. If you keep clicking, the tower keeps presenting cells. There is no you have climbed too high message. There is just the next row, and the next.

For the math behind when you should stop, read When to Stop.