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Townsmen Review: Like an ant farm, but with people

Townsmen, a new virtual city builder by Handygames, is so enjoyable that I had a hard time putting it down. The strange thing is that there isn’t much to the game, if we could even call it a game. Really the title is more akin to those cool ant farms we had as a kid, and possibly related more closely to those giant ant farms that we see in a zoo or private collection. I sat and watched as my hands worked, unable to control what they were doing. This game, this tiny virtual world, had taken over my body and kept me glued to my Nexus 7 tablet. Why did this happen? I have no idea.

Name: Townsmen | Developer: Handygames | Category: Strategy | Players: 1 | Version: 1.0.5 | Size: 23 MB | Price: Free |

I started off by working my way through a pretty simple tutorial and then was instructed to go off into sandbox mode, if I wanted to. Of course I wanted to. I’m guessing sandbox mode was simply the open construction mode that I was so enamored by, but I didn’t stop playing the game long enough to investigate any other modes. Soon enough I was paying 10 US dollars for some in-game cash, using to instantly build key buildings and to keep up with my little ant’s demands.

I love zooming in on my city and watching the details of my tiny inhabitants lives. There’s a wine-maker who picks the grapes, pours them into a vat and proceeds to stomp on them, making wine. There are the tiny, plump housewives who spend their time going back and forth to the market and to the water pump, occasionally stopping to yell directly at the camera. I’m guessing something had set them off but I’m not quite sure what. The information windows are pretty sparse but do get the job mostly done. I ended up building as much as I could around the area of my land that held most of the housing, just in case the move would satisfy the tiny women. Sure, I wish the developers would have thought of more important roles for the women to play other than worker bees and complainers, but perhaps I didn’t unlock the female heroes that appear later in the game. They do appear, right?

Townsmen (and women) is addictive to me because I keep finding ways to build more and more onto my town, causing more demand for even more. The in-game cash helped me feed my obsession, and after a while I grew a bit tired of growing… constantly growing. I am going to start a new town, this time building at a much slower pace and using very little instant-build cash. I want to see how small my town can be while still maintaining a high level of happiness in my community. The real challenge will be to resist the urge to expand forever.

I’m not sure what gamers like me get out of city-builders like Townsmen. I can’t really pinpoint why people like me get pleasure out of watching the tiny, virtual lives of a miniature kingdom. After all, nothing is really happening… there’s not much drama and no one seems to die. I’m not shooting anything and I’m certainly not feeling the pressure that I would normally feel in other games. I’m guessing the hypnotic effect the game has on me and the zen-like trance I go into when playing with a title like Townsmen explains a lot. After all, it made me spend 10 US dollars.

Townsmen is cute, fun and easy. It’s for those of us who enjoy building a town just for the sake of building a town. It’s a playset; a stack of blocks for those of us who are too old to play with blocks. It does feature three optional scenarios, basically a new town challenge like “build three jousting areas” or something else. I found plenty of challenge in the standard sandbox mode but most of that challenge came from attempting to get the game to stop asking me to build more and more and more. As I said earlier, the exact reason I want to build a new town is to challenge myself into keeping the town small and profitable, and to avoid building just for the sake of building. If I’m lucky, I can do just that.

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