The Crystal Tower is a Christmas special in the Outliers and Outsiders (Magical Girl Gina) series, initially released in and set in December 2021. It’s somewhere between a parody, homage, or adaptation of a classic Christmas movie. Like previous entries in the series, it is a first-person shooter with the addition of dialogue sequences, animated cutscenes, and other interactive and cinematic segments.
When a fancy Christmas party goes horribly wrong and terrorists take over the Liberty Macvonden Building, it’s up to Magical Girl Gina to save the day and her girlfriend! The whole thing seems a bit familiar to her, but there’s no time to ponder, only to run, gun, and find a way out of this mess!
I’ve wanted to create some kind of Christmas special for a long time, and had the specific idea of what would become this game at the end of 2020. It was developed more or less alongside At The Break Of Dawn, and shares a lot of assets and mechanics. I had to cut a lot to get it done in time for Christmas 2021, and the core mechanics are showing their roughness, but the plan is to come back and fix or add a little each year. For 2022, some of the worst gameplay segments were cleaned up, the dialogue revamped to be more humorous and self-referential, and a few little details added.