Exploring the Tower
Cooperate together to progress
The Rhythmic Tower awaits players of all skill levels with the ambition to challenge it.
Here's all the information that's known about this mysterious lunar building.
Player Tags
Your tag (a combination of up to 5 letters, numbers, and symbols ?!.<>-+) is what we, and the
website, will identify you as the same player. To ensure your score counts, at the end of each game you'll
be prompted to enter it in.
Please make sure it's sufficiently unique to avoid clashes. Also, keep it family friendly – or at least niche enough. We won't know every language, cultured in-joke, or reference that exists on this planet, so we're trusting your sensibility!
Protip: We strongly recommend first checking to see if your desired tag in the player leaderboards has been taken. If it doesn't appear there, that's a strong sign you can claim it for yourself!
If the game states that you are out of ranking at name entry, let us know anyway.
Eligible scores still count, and we can manually associate these scores to your name.
About the Machine
Whilst players aren't restricted to the SMASH! 2023 pack during the event period on Saturday, we strongly discourage players from playing anything outside of that pack in the interest of finishing the event on time. Players who intend to participate in the event will be given priority.
The machine will be in unrestricted free play during Sunday, with plenty more updated content to choose from. (In fact, we're pretty confident we've got the biggest song library for a public Australian cab!)
You can expect the following environment:
- Very responsive pads – there is absolutely no need to stomp, unlike DDR
- Standard ITG metrics (life gauge 4, 21.5ms timing etc). You won't be able to disable certain judgements for this event
-
Fail mode is set to
Immediate(the song will finish early the moment all players fail) - Songs typically range from 1:30 to 2:45
- Anything that disqualifies a score will not count. This includes, but is not limited to, playing at song rates slower than 1.0×, removing notes, removing mines, C-mods on non-constant BPM charts, etc. This also includes quitting a song early (nice try). If the game states your current player options will disqualify, that's your answer
- Each game will guarantee three stages. If for whatever reason a game prematurely finishes before three stages, you may stay on until then
- Polish and alcohol sprays will be provided to increase/decrease slip and clean the pads. Please don't use anything else
Progression
If destiny has chosen you to be the pioneer of the journey into the Tower, you'll only see one song in the SMASH! 2023 folder at the start.
To reach the next floor, you must successfully explore the current one. Once you have done so, the game will automatically unlock the next floor (or, should – we may manually do this).
Progression is event-wide – if there's a floor that you feel like you just can't seem to tackle, perhaps someone else might be able to step up and help...
Successful Exploration
In most circumstances, all that is needed to successfully explore a floor is just a matter of passing the song. However, every fourth floor has a special aura that infers some kind of additional requirement.
What that is, well... you'll have to keep climbing to see for yourself! However, tales of bygone times seem to all conclude that, whatever it may be, most of these floors can only be overcome with teamwork.
Once a special floor has been reached, you can either check the progress whiteboard or the progress page on this website for the specific requirement.
Prizes
There are two awards that attract prizes:
- Towerblazer: Awarded to the player who first successfully explores the final floor, or the furthest in the Tower by the deadline, if not reached.
- The Captain: Awarded to the player with the most accolades by the deadline.
The deadline is 90 minutes before the end of the event, to allow players to collect prizes.
A player can only obtain one of these prizes, not both. Use this to strategise your approach to the journey.
Accolades are awarded as follows:
| Accolade | Awarded |
|---|---|
| Every pass on a song | 1 |
| First successful exploration of a regular floor | 2 |
| Highest score on a floor | 3 |
| First successful exploration of a special floor | 4 |
Resolving Ties
If two or more players tie scores on a chart:
- The highest score accolade is awarded to the player who got it first.
- If this occurs at the same time (i.e. both players on P1 and P2 end up with the same score), the high score and/or exploration accolade(s) are awarded to both players.
- If this happens on the final floor, the Towerblazer prize is awarded to the player with the lower timing standard deviation.
If two or more players tie accolade counts for The Captain prize:
- A tiebreaker song for this purpose will be played between all players.
- Fail type is
ImmediateContinue(i.e. the song continues after failing). - The winner is determined by the lowest timing standard deviation with preference to players who pass the song. Due to the song continuing, notes after failing still count.