Townscaper 4+

You have no idea, how long I’ve been searching for this game. Previously I had downloaded several other games claiming to have this free range gameplay, however, was disappointed with them all. Now this game is nothing less than superb, there’s no real aim nor purpose but I wouldn’t have it any other way, it encourages your creative side. The fact that where you can place buildings and pavement isn’t linear, really makes it so much more realistic to create your own quaint town which you’d expect to see if you were travelling through Europe. Wouldn’t change a thing about it, but there’s potential to add to it, an idea perhaps to allow to build docks or marinas, and hence have boats and pedestrians, but please don’t ruin the game trying to implement new things as so many other developers have done in the past. The price tag I understand will put many people off, but for such a smooth experience and the beautiful aesthetics and colours, personally I believe it is worth every penny.

For an experimental passion project this is incredible. It’s such a simple but very pleasing game/toy to play around with. All you need is your imagination to click away designing your own little seaside town. I appreciate the no ads, the little details put around or on the buildings and the little sound effect. I hope they do make little updates over time, because I’m looking forward to seeing what they add next. If you’re after a relaxing app, no rush, no timer, just a chill toy to spend some time with while you have your coffee/tea or to waste some chill time with, this is the one. To those who say you can’t delete a building/road just tap on it for a second and let go.

I absolutely love this app, but it really needs more attention to retain users’ interest.

Essential additions:

Ability to delete entire unwanted towns, e.g. through the ‘open’ menu.
Ability to selectively erase (back to sea level and/or back to ground level, ideally) areas of a town, rather than having to delete block-by-block using long-press.
Fix the re-colour function (extra-long-press) which just doesn’t seem to work.
The way the app’s AI determines the form of each block (and its surroundings) is simultaneously genius and annoying. While it is part of the fun of the app to see how a new roof (etc) articulates, and the domino effect on its neighbours, sometimes it would be really nice to be able to choose a pitched roof over a flat roof, a stone arch over an RSJ, a door over a window, etc., to the user’s own design. The same goes for flat and sloping surfaces: being able to choose paving, grass, roof-tile or water, or even bedrock?

Finally, while the pan and zoom functions are mostly really great (simple and intuitive), they are unstable when you get close in. How about being able to walk through the town (or boat through it)? If you went into a door, you could come out of a random door in the same building. How about programming a fly-through of your town? It would also be super to be able to take pictures of views without the colour swatches etc on screen. And how about being able to share town maps with other users?