Consortium: The Tower

Lore & Background

Consortium: The Tower continues Bishop Six's story immediately after the first game, as he drops onto the fictitious Churchill Tower in London in 2042, reportedly occupied by Islamic terrorists. The plot involves Canadian drug peddlers, slimy journalists, and the mysterious entity known as The Voice. The game expands the cast with new friends and foes while revisiting existing relationships.

Gameplay emphasizes freedom of motion with verticality, including running, jumping, charged super jumping, short boosts, and flying via the Free Fall Suit. A combat-focused Battle Utility Suit offers limited movement for added protection. Players can talk to squad members and NPCs, make ghost noises, and use a dynamic ledge-grab system. The Churchill Tower acts as an antagonist, with nanites reshaping floors, moving the water treatment plant, and erecting turrets.

Development began in the Source Engine before switching to Unreal Engine 4. A teaser trailer was uploaded in 2015, and the soundtrack was composed by Jeremy Soule. The game entered Steam Early Access on September 21, 2017, with updates through December 2019. Phase Two commenced around 2023, with patches in May and November 2024, the latter including all of Act 1 and preview areas from Act 2. The developers stated the game is in development hell and advised consumers not to buy it.

Reader's Guide

Consortium: The Tower is significant as a troubled sequel that has struggled to reach completion despite two crowdfunding campaigns and years of development. Its early access release on Steam in 2017 received mixed reception, with praise for innovation but frustration over its unfinished state. The game's development history illustrates the challenges of indie game production, including engine switches, funding shortfalls, and prolonged development hell. The project's current pause, with developers focusing on survival, marks it as a cautionary tale in the gaming industry. Its legacy lies in its ambitious design—non-linear maps, vertical movement, and narrative depth—that remains unrealized. The game's companion app and recent patches show intermittent progress, but the developers' own warning against purchase underscores its uncertain future.

Did You Know?

• The first Kickstarter campaign ended February 19, 2016, raising $182,780 CAD of the $450,000 CAD goal.
• The game was released to Steam Early Access on September 21, 2017.
• The soundtrack was composed by Jeremy Soule, his final game soundtrack before sexual misconduct allegations in 2019.
• The developers stated in November 2024 that the game is in development hell and consumers should not buy it.

Development & Funding Journey

Consortium's path to release was shaped by both institutional backing and the unpredictability of crowdfunding. Interdimensional Games secured a $500,000 CAD grant from the Canada Media Fund in 2010, which formed the financial backbone of the project. Despite that foundation, the studio still turned to Kickstarter for supplemental capital. Their initial 2012 campaign failed to meet its target, a setback that necessitated a second attempt. The follow-up effort, launched on April 18, 2013, ultimately collected US$70,435 from backers, supplying the remaining resources needed to bring the project to completion. The finished title shipped for Microsoft Windows on January 8, 2014. The project's momentum carried forward: a sequel, Consortium: The Tower, entered Steam Early Access on September 21, 2017, broadening the narrative and mechanical scope. In May 2024, both Consortium VR and Consortium Remastered launched simultaneously, with the VR edition targeting Meta Quest and SteamVR, demonstrating the studio's sustained commitment to the franchise across evolving hardware platforms.

Gameplay Mechanics & Design Philosophy

What sets Consortium apart from conventional first-person shooters is its deliberate subversion of genre expectations. Rather than compelling players into relentless gunfights, the game presents a full spectrum of combat engagement—complete avoidance, non-lethal resolution, or outright lethal force—mirroring the design ethos of Deus Ex. This flexibility is further shaped by the relatively compact scale of the game world, lending each encounter a sense of weight and consequence. The conversational system is equally distinctive: dialogue is managed through keys mapped to specific responses, with an in-game apparatus facilitating a form of semi-telepathic exchange, ensuring that conversations never interrupt the flow of play. Layered atop this is a branching narrative structure comparable to the Mass Effect trilogy, paired with a character alignment system that reshapes every playthrough. The most striking implication is that players can, through their accumulated choices, uncover the meta-plot of the game itself—a narrative stratum that blurs the boundary between fiction and the act of playing.

Narrative & World-Building

The story unfolds in a mid-21st-century timeline where traditional national militaries have been dissolved, replaced by a single technologically advanced world police force known as the Consortium. The player assumes the role of Bishop 6, an elite soldier within this organization, aboard the futuristic aircraft Zenlil, whose crew operates under chess-themed rank designations. The central mission is deceptively straightforward in premise: during a flight from Bulgaria to Ireland, Bishop 6 must contend with hostile mercenaries while simultaneously identifying a traitor concealed among the crew. What elevates the narrative beyond a standard thriller is its self-awareness. The fiction explicitly acknowledges that the player and Bishop 6 are distinct entities, linked through an interdimensional video game connection. Non-player characters may not recognize that their companion is being piloted from another dimension, creating a persistent tension between the character's apparent autonomy and the player's external agency that permeates every interaction.

Reception & Legacy

Upon its January 2014 release, Consortium drew a mixed critical response, settling at a 66/100 aggregate score on Metacritic. Reviewers consistently highlighted the strength of the storytelling while flagging a significant number of software bugs that marred the experience. Interdimensional Games responded with the Master Edition patch in April 2014, aimed squarely at resolving those technical shortcomings. The game's most enduring critical appreciation came from a retrospective by Rock, Paper, Shotgun, which examined how the fourth-wall-breaking conceit was reinforced by the conversation system and dialogue options. The publication concluded that the game represented a concrete demonstration of what video games could achieve for a generation—something no other medium could replicate. The franchise's legacy extends further still: a spiritual precursor, Amen: The Awakening, exists within the same lore, and the 2024 VR and Remastered releases have kept the world accessible to new audiences on modern platforms.

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