You don't get to choose the roof - the game makes a share of its own decisions based on rules you can easily learn. But there's also the way a building will switch roofs as it grows, from gable to spire and back again depending on what's growing around it, or maybe the spire will turn the section below it into a little rounded tower, pinched inwards, walls breathing in, as it were, and holding the breath, until you place another section. There's that splash of water as a new settlement rises from the seas. As each new block pops into existence I'm still surprised by how dynamic everything is. Pop pop pop! (The sound effects help.) Edinburgh? Hastings? Seville?īut there's something else too. It's hard not to make something in this game, and once you've made something it's hard not to think of ways you might muddle with it, improve it, expand it, or concentrate it. Zoom in, change the colours of the next blocks you put down, drop the whole thing out to white box to make it look truly sculptural, change the position of the sun, take a screenshot, tinker away some more. One button to place a building, one to remove it. This is a game-like toy, an art tool in which you create - and erase, if you wish - little towns, starting with a still stretch of water and ending with busy centres, suburbs, cathedrals, tower blocks, hamlets, burgs, you name it. But like the face of a wristwatch, it pulls you in, its own little universe for you to peer down at and ponder for who knows how long. Townscaper is a simple thing, as simple and clear as the face of a wristwatch. With each building you place in Townscaper, each new disturbance on its flat ocean, you get a splash of water to go along with the brisk, genial popping sound as you press the button. It's water: a little eruption of it, a hopping splash of droplets. This is an art toy to savour, and a time-waster of great power.
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