![]() ![]() Townscaper is full of quirks like this, right down to the fact that the grid you use to place buildings is not an even grid - it has different shapes, and these shapes in turn affect the blocks you place, giving you slices of cheese, door wedges, the odd star-form plaza. ![]() And study it: a sheer face is very different from a gaggle of houses that seem to sprout together, a low city with a hill is very different from a cluster of teetering needles. Stilts, a bent leg reaching for hard ground, a wall of brick with a little railing, a framework of girders with a little ladder. This is why each town you build ultimately feels like a negotiation - between you and the software, you and the environment, each building negotiating with the building you place it next to. You don't get to choose the roof - the game makes a share of its own decisions based on rules you can easily learn. But there's also the way a building will switch roofs as it grows, from gable to spire and back again depending on what's growing around it, or maybe the spire will turn the section below it into a little rounded tower, pinched inwards, walls breathing in, as it were, and holding the breath, until you place another section. There's that splash of water as a new settlement rises from the seas. As each new block pops into existence I'm still surprised by how dynamic everything is. Pop pop pop! (The sound effects help.) Edinburgh? Hastings? Seville?īut there's something else too. It's hard not to make something in this game, and once you've made something it's hard not to think of ways you might muddle with it, improve it, expand it, or concentrate it. Zoom in, change the colours of the next blocks you put down, drop the whole thing out to white box to make it look truly sculptural, change the position of the sun, take a screenshot, tinker away some more. One button to place a building, one to remove it. This is a game-like toy, an art tool in which you create - and erase, if you wish - little towns, starting with a still stretch of water and ending with busy centres, suburbs, cathedrals, tower blocks, hamlets, burgs, you name it. But like the face of a wristwatch, it pulls you in, its own little universe for you to peer down at and ponder for who knows how long. Townscaper is a simple thing, as simple and clear as the face of a wristwatch. With each building you place in Townscaper, each new disturbance on its flat ocean, you get a splash of water to go along with the brisk, genial popping sound as you press the button. It's water: a little eruption of it, a hopping splash of droplets. Now that it's out for real, I don't doubt it'll keep popping back in for a quick vacation for many months to come.This is an art toy to savour, and a time-waster of great power. It's an extremely simple wee thing, and if you're looking for anything resembling a challenge, you'll probably find yourself clocking out in seconds.īut met on its own terms, diving in when you've a few spare minutes to lay down a new neighbourhood, Townscaper is an absolutely joyous little time waster that's kept me busy since it first hit early access last year. A recent update even lets you export your town as a 3D model for printing, prototyping or whatever else you fancy. With high-res screenshot options, texture toggles and the ability to move the sun itself, Townscaper makes for a shockingly good desktop wallpaper generator. Sure, you can awkwardly finagle the camera to a street-level view, but I long for an update that'll let me stroll the boardwalks myself. It's just a shame you can't zoom right down to a first-person view. Townscaper may not have the complexity of a Cities: Skylines, but its quaint towns littered with cobbled streets and old churches, dockyards and lighthouses feel more instantly homely than the sterile American-styled metropolises of "real" city-builders-even when your town includes impossibly tall citadels or Bioshock Infinite-style floating cities. ![]()
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