Town to City Preview
Fans of cozy building sims don’t suffer from a lack of choice. It’s easy to see why the genre is so popular, too, because watching your little slice of world grow and prosper is very satisfying. Coming to early access is Galaxy Grove’s Town to City. Building games like Townscaper are simply exercises in chill, while others are more complex and sim-like. Town to City lands somewhere in the middle.
Familiar Flow
All games in the genre pretty much start the same. The player has a bit of land, a few basic tools and structures, and it’s off to the races. Housing, merchants, roads come first, followed by next-tier buildings like storehouses, city halls, churches and factories. The town needs workers, workers need housing, food and leisure activities. On and on it goes until the screen is filled with citizens and structures and activity. Keeping everyone happy and the money flowing are always core puzzles to solve.
Town to City doesn’t stray far from the familiar template, which is not a bad thing. It makes the game quick to learn. There is a campaign, which leads players through the game’s systems through a series of escalating demands. Then there’s the sandbox mode, which turns Town to City into an endlessly evolving, creative playground.
Standing Apart
While much about Town to City feels familiar, it definitely establishes its own identity in several ways. Most obviously, the game has a very attractive, voxel graphics approach that looks like a marriage between Lego and Minecraft in miniature. This means that when cities have grown to large, complex collections, they look like intricate desktop dioramas. It also makes the art future-proof as the stylized visuals don’t strive for realism. Of course, aesthetics are by definition subjective. Some gamers might prefer a more detailed, grounded style. Also, zoomed in very close the angular voxel art can look a bit difficult to parse.
Another important difference in Town to City is that there is no grid system. This means that the layout of a town can grow organically, with winding streets and funky little enclaves instead of rigidly placed districts. Of course, there are still some considerations. Structures — even in the sandbox mode — have requirements. For example, houses need proximity to services like food stalls for families to move in. The freeform building idea allows for a lot of creativity and very unique towns. However, some of the tools need a bit of refinement. For instance, painting roads lacks the precision that a more rigid system allows. Trying to connect a road to a house or shop invariably means painting it under the structure as well.
The sandbox mode includes a fairly wide array of options, so that you can turn off many of restrictions and challenges, like citizen happiness or money.
It’s Always Sunny in Town to City
Town to City is set in a version of the 19th century Mediterranean, so the landscapes are lush and the architecture is romantic and elegant. In sandbox mode, players have a choice of five starting biomes, but they’re all pretty similar and unfortunately there isn’t an editor to create one from scratch. Building types are relatively limited but there are pre-set variations of each. This means that while you can’t custom paint a house, there are color choices built in.
There are a lot of options for adding little details to the town. Light, decorations, trees, flowers, fountains, the list is long. Since there is no snap-to grid, there’s a lot of freedom in where everything can be placed. The downside is that it takes a little extra effort to make sure things are where you want them.
Town to City strikes a good balance between freedom and challenge. Even in sandbox mode with nearly everything turned off, there are still some requirements to meet. With a colorful and distinctive art style, attractive music and the ability to build “off the grid,” Town to City should appeal to both cozy builders and more sim-focused fans.
***PC code provided by the publisher for preview***
