Control Physics in Tower Lab
Play Tug Studio has announced that a Tower Lab demo is coming to Steam next week, although the team has not yet confirmed an exact release date. The news follows the game’s second community playtest, which attracted nearly 2,000 unique players and helped refine its core systems.
Tower Lab is an emergent, physics-based tower defense game that leans heavily into sandbox-style contraption building. Every moving object in the game obeys physics, creating a playground where experimentation drives success. Anything you can do to an enemy, you can also do to your own projectiles, opening the door to creative problem-solving. Players can grow enemies to farm additional matter, split projectiles into multiple pieces, or manipulate objects made from different physical materials. These materials feature properties such as mass, friction, conductivity, bounciness, and magnetism, all of which interact dynamically during combat.
“We’re aiming to capture the soul of classic physics-based contraption-building games with a focus on strategic creativity. The game is a roguelite deck builder, and each run provides a new set of tools to upgrade and combine in unique ways,” said the team at Play Tug Studio
Unlike traditional tower defense games, enemies in Tower Lab have no health bars. Instead, players must use physics to their advantage, pushing, pulling, and launching foes off the level to survive each wave. Towers synergize through physical forces rather than scripted effects, allowing for surprising and often chaotic outcomes.
For players seeking a greater challenge, an endless mode pits defenses against increasingly difficult waves, with global leaderboards tracking how each build stacks up against the competition.