Towns is a top down creative strategy game built on java. I picked up this game during the Steam summer sale. I had been eyeing it over since it hit the Steam greenlight but after giving it a fair hearing, I was less then impressed.
Now do not get me wrong, it is not a bad game, I will even say it is pretty decent. But in terms of game play, play-ability, it is most assuredly limited.
The first thing you will notice upon cracking into this game is its blocky nature. Very aesthetically similar to another game we have all played *cough cough* Minecraft *cough cough* though the blockiness is about where the similarities end.
GAMEPLAY
6/10
One thing that really bothers me about modern games is the tutorials. I am actually exceedingly happy for them, but some games really go hog wild with that crap. On the other hand, no tutorial, or one that lacks in preparing you for a very complex game is more annoying. Minecraft was great for this: “Here we’ll just drop you on an abandoned island… hope you figure stuff out before night time *wink*”
Towns is very similar in that, except it is a strategy game, with potentially very complex recipes for items. There is a very short 6 part tutorial that basically shows you that you start with 11 builders, and you build things. Other than that, there is a complete lack of narrative.
There is also NO indication of how you get MORE people to show up which is an intergrle feature of the game. More people equals more productivity.
There is also NO indication for when you have selected a space for something. For example. in order to get more residents, current residents need personal space. Great, make a 20×20 space for all your peeps, adding beds for each of your 11 people. Took me like ten minutes to realize that only one guy was sleeping in there. Turns out after crawling through wiki articles that you cannot have a single 20×20 space, you need a 3×3+ space for each individual with their separate amenities. The tutorial did not even cover attracting new residents, otherwise I might have known that.
Another irritating aspect is when you assign your workers to harvest things there are some odd behaviors. Often times this will take them underground, harvesting stone, iron or whatever. Anyway, if say one of your peeps breaks into a water main, so water comes spilling into the cavern, your serfs are not smart enough to stop trying to harvest where you left your orders. So you can end up with EVERYONE dying from trying to harvest stone underwater. >_< there is nothing in the tutorial either about canceling those kinds of suicidal orders. In fact it is actually very difficult to cancel orders, as you have to be on the right level with the right focus.
Building is another challenge. Once you get the hang of it, it is not so bad, but you spend more time fighting with the interface then actually building. Often times you will think that you are placing an object perfectly, but due to the perspective you are actually trying to place the object mid-air. There is no rotation option either so you pretty much have to deal with the odd camera angle.
There are bugs, but the game is still being maintained by the author so there have been quite a few updates since the games initial release. we hope for great things
OVERALL Gameplay:
Once you get used to to the goofy formatting, learn the recipes and the difficult controls it is not so bad. I found that once you have about 40+ residents and 6+ hero’s you are more/less self sustaining. It is fun and can actually be left as sort of a background activity while you play other more engaging games.
Aesthetics
5/10
Visually the game is not impressive. It does have a nice appeal to it, which is why the score is not 1. But when you are building on Java there are quite a few limitations. There are some nice visual items, like the architecture once you are really building. There is a LOT of stuff to make your houses/castle/wherever visually appealing. So once you are really going, things are not bad.
Controls
3/10
Oh man, where to start. A lot of this is repeat from gameplay but I must say again, the fixed perspective and how you transition between layers, it can be REALLY hard to build something to your visualized image. The images the game thinks you can build look excellent and very possible, but in actuality it is EXCESSIVELY difficult to get the blocks to cooperate. Seriously. Once time, due to this fixed perspective, I accidentally dug a random hole in the ground. I figured I must simply build a wall/floor to fill the bloody hole, but my workers could not seem to get the blocks right. they kept stacking them, or there were big red ‘X’s over them. With the lack of any type of status windows I never really did figure out why they were not building correctly.
Music
1/10
I really probably should not touch this as the amount of music in this game is very limited. By limited I mean one track, which plays over and over, incessantly. I ended up sticking on some tunes from the Dungeon Defenders sountrack to make the game feel more epic. It sort of worked. Anyway, I would suggest using your own music.
Overall
6/10
You know, given all of it’s faults, this is an Indie game, and not manufactured by a big box publisher. For that it actually is a pretty decent game. Buggyness and irksome behavior aside, I did enjoy the game once I watched several online tutorials about how things work. I have not actually played it in some time but, given the low powered nature of the game, you can pick it up any time and start from scratch and have a great time. Also at the time of this writing, the game was still in active development, which means some of this buggyness may go away.
only $14.99 on Steam:
http://store.steampowered.com/app/221020/