Towns Review

Once you do get the hang of the basics, you can generally start to figure out how to continue. All items can be built from the start, you just need to have the right components, tools and utilities to build them. After a few hours you will have a decent automated production line of food and essential items going, and from there you will be able to expand your operations. Having walls and a roof over a production building like a masonry or kitchen will increase the speed your townsfolk work. On my first playthrough, I built a roof over the carpentry area. It worked fine, items were coming out with greater speed, but after a while, I got the shocking message that three of my people had died of starvation. I rushed to where they had fallen, which happened to be on top of the roof I had just built. After a bit of searching online, I discovered that you should build scaffolding to allow easy access to roofs. This would be a mistake I would make sure not to repeat in future worlds.

Eventually you will run out of useful resources on the surface nearby, and you will have to delve deeper into the world. However this will be dangerous, as all manner of horrible creatures live below the first layer. You will either have to craft weapons and armour for your starting civilians, or you can try and attract heroes to your town. Building a tavern, and having some nice decorations around your town will encourage heroes to come and stay there. They will rest in the tavern, eat food from your supplies, and will not help with any of the chores. What they will do, is search out adventure in the dungeon below, clearing it of monsters, and allowing your workers to go down and do their mining. The heroes will level up as they kill more enemies, eventually granting helpful auras to those nearby. Random loot will drop from some of the creatures they kill, which you can use to equip your own people. You do not only want to attract heroes to your town though. Getting normal townsfolk to come and live there is crucial too, as this will allow you to get your work done faster. This means you can construct more amenities to attract more heroes, and the cycle continues.

After you get past the difficulty hump, and start learning what you can build and how the best way to do it is, it becomes a much more fun game. Despite this, I found the lack of decent in-game tutorials to be inexcusable. The game itself is quite addictive though, and it is easy to lose a few hours to Towns in one sitting if you get into the “just one more building” mindset. You will easily make it worth every penny you spend on the game, which already has a pretty low price point. It is also fairly relaxing watching your people go about their work. You are mostly not under pressure apart from the occasional invasion of monsters, but these are usually easily dealt with. Pick up Towns if you want a cute, yet challenging management game, but be warned that you will spend as much time online reading about the mechanics as you will actually playing it.