Terror Towers

Likeable comedy-horror game show which badly wanted to be a children's version of The Crystal Maze.

Steve Johnson welcomes his guests.

Set in a haunted castle, two teams of two kids played games and answered questions to win eyeballs. The team with the most eyeballs wins the game and goes through to the Stinky Sink. The show went something like this:

EYEBALLS!!!

Observational quiz: This preceded each of the main games. Players would be required to listen to Steve reading out a story whilst objects danced spookily through a window or in a picture or something. There would now be a buzzer quiz and if the red team buzzed first, a mysterious voice shouted 'RED' and if the green team buzzed it shouted 'GREEN', a nice touch. With each correct answer, a part of their skull lit up. With two eyes, a nose and a mouth lit they won the quiz. They would now get a chance to pass or play the challenge which was worth two eyeballs.

Would you like some tea? Or just a quiz?

The Shrinking Room: A ghost (played by the omnipresent Steve) would explain what they had to do in the room. They would be given two minutes to do it, whatever it is, but the catch was that the walls would randomly close in on them, knocking down anything they had done. To counter this, players could push the walls back out again.

A moving bookcase? Yup! Looks haunted to me.

Boris's Tower: Boris the magical talking puppet spider had a tower which crazily was full of webs which hampered things a bit, and an industrial fan beneath them blowing everything about everywhere.

GARGH!!! WEBS!!! AND...a jigsaw puzzle.

The Creepy Corridors: Two blindfolded contestants entered the Creepy Corridors and had to be guided to their exit gate which was at the other end, near where the other person started, actually! This was a maze and both team-mates shouted their orders through simultaneously, but more than anything this was a test of how loud you could shout more than can you guide someone through a maze. Spookily, despite the fact that both opposing team-members supposedly entered in the same trapdoor, they both ended up in opposite parts of the maze. Now, that IS creepy! This was worth three eyeballs.

Would Mystic Meg shout at a crystal ball?

The Nightmare Room: Or the master bedroom. The catch here was that everything was supposedly upside down so the players stood on the ceiling as it were. The cameras picked up on this by playing the first twenty seconds or so the right/wrong way up then they turned the camera upside down so we could see them playing the wrong/right way up. AND the room rocked from side to side. This was worth four eyeballs.

Now I know what it feels like to own an hotel in Japan.

At this point, the team with the least eyeballs were given a goody bag but were eaten by werewolves escaping the castle so didn't really get the chance to use them. So, onto The Stinky Sink - a.k.a. a giant-gunge filled wash basin. Apparently, Steve's great-great grandfather had four faces which meant four pairs of eyeballs. The winning team had one minute to find the matching pairs of eyeballs and put then on the rack. The more pairs of eyeballs they found, the more prizes they win but the biggest prize of all is that they get to stay at Terror Towers... FOREVER! (do-doo-do-dooo-do-doo-do-dooo)

So, this is why the pipes have been clogged up for centuries.

The format was generally the same as the first but with a few differences:

• There were now two teams of THREE kids
• The team that was coloured Red in the first series was changed to Orange for this series
• There was now a race at the start of the show with one kid in each team going through various obstacles and the one that raises the gate first wins themselves an eyeball.
• The fan in Boris' Tower was removed, which made it far less exciting, really.
• The Stinky Sink game was changed for the winning team, they would have to find the bones of Steve's great-great grandfather and put him back together. There are six pieces of his body to find and they would have to put them on in the right order. For every piece that is correctly place, the bigger the prize they get. And yes, as always, they get to remain guests at Terror Towers...FOREVER!

And that's about it. Same format with a few changes thrown into the mix to keep the show afloat. Until...

The third series changed things somewhat:

• Steve now had a co-host named Kimberley from South Africa.
• We now have three characters, a butler named Grunt, a vampiress named Bogey who is Boris' chaotic friend and a ghost named Dirt Cool Duke who replaces Steve's ghostly characters to explain the rules to each game.
• The number of kids in both teams were reverted back to two.
• Small games were now the deciders to who went into the rooms, but no-one knows which room they'll be going to. So, what about the observational quiz? That is now the climax of the show, which we will get to later.
• The obstacle course relay race round the basement was carried over from the second series where now both kids in both teams have to race.
• A new small game had a "don't touch the big chain with the manacle" arrangement where the team who made the further progress go to choose who goes in the last room.
• The Stinky Sink game reverted back to finding eyeballs, but this time, both teams had to find them and they don't have to be matching coloured pairs. The team that lost would as always get a goody bag, but, they won't be needing it where they're going, because the prize for the winners to stay at Terror Towers no longer applied to them, they go to the losing team.
• The overall winning team now had to go through the observational quiz where Steve will tell a story in rhyme and the more questions related to the story they answered correctly, the bigger the prize they win. A max of eight is the star prize.

So yeah, quite a lot of changes for this series, but at least this series didn't jump the shark like what Finders Keepers would do a third of the year later.

The show's main problem? There were only three games per room which is a shame because it was quite good. Quite.

The chaotic screaming and shouting from the four kids shouting instructions at a crystal ball to their blindfolded teammate in the creepy corridors during the second series.

Neil Buchanan & Tim Edmunds

Mr Miller & Mr Porter

Incredible Games - the show people are always getting mixed up with Terror Towers (it's the one with the alphabet soup and talking lift).