Townscaper review: a tranquilizing tincture
Our Verdict
A tranquil, minimalist town-builder with a beautiful, illustrative art style and serene sound design. Townscaper is a perfect game to unwind with and achieves exactly what it sets out to do.
The toy-like town-builder Townscaper gained a lot of attention during a period of early access and solidified its place on my radar. I knew I had to give Switch a go after seeing it in action at the Gamescom Awesome Indie Showcase.
Townscaper is a really easy-to-use but rewarding game. Since I tend to become nervous easily, I found the game to be a very helpful tool for relaxing and relieving my anxiety when I would otherwise be pacing the house and biting my nails. The whole game is centered on calming, peaceful sentiments; there is no plot, nothing to unlock, no grinding, and no leveling up—your only objective is to create something lovely.
Even while not everyone will like its simple gameplay, it has a place in the market. The unusual settings and graphic style have a dreamy, nostalgic sense that left me fully at rest. It's a curiously pleasant feeling to put colorful construction blocks down in a calm ocean and let the algorithm figure out how to connect them.
The absence of limitations is one of the game's main appeals. You are free to explore and experiment with the sandbox, which has a beautiful, muted color palette and an artistic visual style. You may discover patterns and arrange the blocks to make any kind of design you choose. For someone with an artistic bent who often finds it difficult to find time for creation, this is a great method to explore freely without worrying about consequences. I soon found myself building huge residential complexes with balconies and verandas interspersed with enormous, expansive canal networks, and tiny coastal villages.
The controls are simple to use and straightforward, and the fact that you can add or remove blocks from structures and maps you've already made emphasizes how little pressure there is on the player. It was fun to go between towns, change things around, and see my town develop; it's simple to picture the small people who may dwell in the structures and the kinds of lifestyles they would lead.
It's a very affordable price if this tiny treasure appeals to you. It's been well worth the money for me at only $5.99/£4.79 on Switch, and ever since I got it, I've been using it to relax before bed every night. Though I think it fits well in my Switch collection, I'm delighted that it will also be available on mobile later this year.
Townscaper is an artistically beautiful and well-organized town builder that exudes calm and tranquility everywhere, and I can already tell that I'll be spending a lot of time developing my own little beachside paradise in the future.