![]() ![]() Who lives in those rickety rowhouses climbing into the sky like a staircase? Do they ever make it down to the docks to look across the bay at the multilevel floating gardens? Could they be in love with the lighthouse keeper keeping watch from a thousand stories up? Townscaper has just as much story as MS Paint does, which is to say zilch, but when I’m playing it, I can’t help but imagine what’s going on in this little world I’m creating. Whether you see it as pruning a digital tree or Photoshop-but-with-buildings, what Townscaper really is, is a catalyst for creativity. I bet the citizens of Townscaper don’t age at all, either. It makes no attempt to hold you to the constraints of physics, so your creations have no obligation to obey that bastard gravity that’s always keeping us down, even if you remove their supports entirely to build a floating castle. Speaking of which, Townscaper has no time for reality. Much as there’s joy to be found in sculpting quaint little gardens and seaside villas in Townscaper, there’s just as much in coming up with impossible designs and then making them a reality. Raw FuryĪnd those ideas can get wild as hell. Going in within a plan and seeing what springs up is an excellent way to play Townscaper. It’s the perfect go-with-the-flow game, letting you experiment to your heart’s content without any punishment for leaving one project half-built to pursue another wild idea. You’re ultimately in control of everything, but after a while, your town seems to take its own shape, each piece growing out of what’s already built. In that way, Townscaper can feel more like gardening than city planning. That’s how I learned that building onto the side of an existing structure would produce an extension jutting out on stilts, and I spent the next few minutes building the most impractical maze of floating rooms I could, all teetering in the air in one long spiral. Because so much of the process is determined automatically by where you place your cursor, there’s plenty of room for happy accidents. ![]() ![]() The point is just to build and enjoy seeing what pops up. There’s no score-keeping in Townscaper, no win conditions or quests. The only other control you have is over the position of the sun, so you can place light and shade to show off your creation exactly how you want it.Īnd that’s essentially it. Raising a massive tower is really no harder than setting up a row of houses, as the buildings change form to suit their height on their own. You can choose which color the structures will appear in, but otherwise, the whole process is automatic. Push it again and a building springs up with a satisfying “plunk” sound, growing taller with each button press. Using the cursor as your brush, a push of a button first calls forth a patch of ground from the ocean that serves as your canvas. In a way, Townscaper feels more like an art program than a game. Creation is the sole point of Townscaper. ![]()
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