Towns Review

We have all played RPGs where you control a hero in search of people to save and treasure to loot. When all the bad guys have been killed, we go back to town, grab some supplies, have a rest, and then head back out again for more adventure. We are taking the town for granted. Think about who is running the town, and all the effort that had to be put in to build the tavern for you to sleep in, and all the food that is ready for you to eat. Towns is a game that turns the tables on a classic dungeon crawler. You build the town, maintain it, and ultimately you want heroes to come and use your facilities. It is a game that is constantly being updated by developer SMP, and has found some success on Steam Greenlight. This Minecraft-like update cycle has drawn some complaints from people who expected to be buying a full game. However if you go into it knowing that the game is evolving, there is certainly enjoyment to be had.

When you start up a new game, a randomly generated map is created for you, and you are granted a handful of townsfolk raring to bring some civilization to the area. You control the action from an isometric viewpoint, and it is your job to help these people survive the hostile environment, and to build a successful town. You can move between the altitude levels in the world using the scroll wheel, going down into the earth as well as upwards. The graphics and sounds are very basic (the entire game download takes up a mere 19 Mb on your hard drive). There are two very short audio loops which are addictive at first, but later just become an annoyance. However pretty visuals and epic soundtracks are not what games like this are about. The concept of Towns will be familiar to anyone who has played Dwarf Fortress. Through commands and production queues, the townsfolk will go about their business without you having to micromanage. To start with, the most important thing you will have to think about is food. So, choosing the gather command and selecting an area of fruit trees will set your people to work. Then you might want to start tilling some fields and planting some wheat. Next you will want to make some buildings – perhaps a bakery to make some bread out of the wheat you just planted. Choose the chop command and select some trees, then map out an area for your bakery, and your settlers will oblige.

Soon enough, after you have worked your way through the clunky menu system, you will have a functioning food production line, which can be automated so that when people notice that there is wheat to be harvested, they will do so, and turn it into bread. Once food is sorted out, you can start making tools and new buildings like masonries, and bedrooms for your townspeople, as this will be important to keep them happy. Once you have got this early game sorted out, it is quite relaxing to set out tasks for your people, and then watch them happily go about their business. Watching your town grow in exactly the way you want it to is quite satisfying. However, getting to the point in the game where you really know what you are doing takes time, and brings me to the weakest part of Towns.

The in-game tutorials are next to useless. They give you just about a basic knowledge of what is going on, but it is never explained why you are doing these things. One tutorial told me to build a certain utility, but did not tell me what the steps for building it were. Most things in the game beyond a few of the basic commands you have to figure out yourself, or check online for. It is easy to see how people have become frustrated with the unfinished nature of Towns, as I certainly do not want to spend hours reading wiki pages or watching tutorials on YouTube after spending money on a game. That is precisely what I had to do though, and I learned a bunch of new stuff that made sense, that had simply not been explained to me by the game itself.

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.