izigame.me

I absolutely love quaint minimalistic indie games. I believe like we're soon entering (if not already) a second golden age of indie gaming - and it makes me really happy that games like Townscaper can exist in an environment where they can thrive and reach communities of people that are into minimalism and city building. The game itself is much less like a game and more of an artistic tool for expression - I'll try to explain lmao.
The game is essentially just a canvas and a tool. You click on preset, slightly malleable grid spaces, and a procedurally generated city tile pops up. As you start clicking on different grids, the city tiles start to amalgamate together and create a sort of more sensical human-friendly livable area. That, of course, also depends on your intention. You can very quickly and easily go crazy and create a monstrous manifestation of what could appear in early versions of AI image engines when you type prompts like "4k res, photorealistic, cityscape, floating island". In reality Townscaper works more like using one of those relaxing fidget or squishy toy things. You click and an aesthetic, beautifully colored piece of real estate appears. The millennial dream.
The game unfortunately is very short lived. There's absolutely nothing else to do other than marvel at your creations - then eventually lose the patience of having to be creative, goof around in the game, get bored of it and quit. My threshold was around 13 minutes. This game will probably appeal to a more patient and chill kinda gamer (which is very apparent in the showcases that pop up under the steam news section of the game) and maybe they will be able to get more mileage out of it.
While I commend its existence and love that most of gaming's innovation is happening in the indie scene, I'm probably never playing this game ever again. All in all I will rate it a 2 luxury apartments out of 5 🏢🏢* (with the caveat that people that are into very chill games will definitely love it more)*