honestly

I knew Town to City had ensnared me in its nefarious trap the moment it told me I could customise individual window boxes. Yes, this early access city builder is one of those games, seemingly aimed specifically at weirdos like me whose idea of bliss is hours spent in a serene reverie of fastidious path-laying and flower-planting, all in the name of aesthetic perfection. And if you count yourself in that number, Town to City might just be the ideal retreat as the cold autumnal nights draw in.

Town to City

Developer: Galaxy Grove
Publisher: Kwalee
Platform: Played on PC
Availability: Out now on Steam

If Town to City seems familiar, it may be because it’s a follow-up to developer Galaxy Grove’s equally minimalist (and equally voxelly) Station to Station. As with that earlier game, Town to City slides into that inescapable subgenre of ‘cosy’, which – for those of you who haven’t already succumbed to the allure of a digital turnip – essentially means it’s designed to be soothingly friction-free.

Cosy games tend to be a little impervious to standard criticism, given they’re more about the vibes rather than any clever mechanical sophistication, and that’s the case again with Town to City. Its campaign (there’s also sandbox mode with various tweakable parameters) unfolds across a well-worn loop of upgrades and expansion – one that’s pleasantly propulsive but otherwise fairly unremarkable.

Town to City launch trailer.Watch on YouTube

Essentially, citizens produce goods; goods increase happiness; the happier your citizens are, the more will move to your town. More citizens means more goods, means more people, until you’ve crossed a threshold that allows you to turn your dwelling into a hamlet into a village and so on, unlocking new buildings and customisation options each time.

It’s familiar stuff, and Town to City streamlines the formula down to the absolute essentials. There’re a few wrinkles, mind, but these ultimately boil down to space management – don’t expect to see anything like cross-border trade agreements or complex production chains here. Plop some buildings down to satisfy early demand – a couple of single-story houses, perhaps, or a vegetable stall – and it won’t be long before you’ve built yourself into a corner, and the only way to continue catering to your citizens’ ever-escalating whims is a town redesign. But that’s fine! Really, design is what Town to City is all about. Think of it more as a beautification tool with a few simple progression knobs on, and its appeal is immediately clear.

A plan comes together! | Image credit: Eurogamer/Galaxy Grove

Town to City’s boxy voxel aesthetic might look restrictive, but its grid-free construction system – similar to the excellent, and more mechanically complex, Foundation – means your grand expansion plans can unfold in satisfyingly organic ways. Each of the five bucolic maps included in Town to City’s early access release are intended to invoke a sort of peaceful Mediterranean air, and by the time you’ve delved deep into its toybox of customisation options, and your creations are bustling with life, those boxy visuals pack in a surprising amount of charm.

Kudos, too, for a construction tool kit that manages to feel creatively flexible without ever being overwhelming. Sure, I’m already assembling a mental wishlist of additions I’d love to see – a path smoothing tool to counter my wobbly mouse hand, for instance – but this is still in early access development, after all. And honestly, I’ve been having a genuinely lovely time – to the tune of far too many hours, frankly – building my beautiful boxy dioramas, lost in a blissful daze of quaint market squares, picturesque parks around crystalline lakes, and palatial residences high on hills. And the well-featured camera tool has sucked up a decent amount of my time too.

Photo mode is pretty compelling too. | Image credit: Eurogamer/Galaxy Grove

Town to City might be in early access, but it already feels incredibly robust. Galaxy Grove seems to agree, too, given its Steam page suggests future updates will be more about refinement (and animals!) than dramatic reinvention. So if you’re also the kind of person to get an involuntary quiver at the merest mention of customisable window boxes, this’ll almost certainly be right for you. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got some flowers to stick in the ground.

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They took him! They took the butt ugly bloke who was squatting in the bathroom! The one who kept insisting that the sun’s burning heat was cleansing the Earth of sin and, totally unconnected from that I assume, was divorced. Those hazmat-suited fiends! I ought to give them a piece of my mind.

I bloody well will do, just as soon as I’ve worked out who’s turned two of my other guests into neatly arranged bin bags of dead parts. My suspicions are firmly lodged at the feet of the toothless and fish-faced nun who ended up the only one in that room left alive, and my trigger finger’s itchy.

These are thoughts that may end up going through your mind as you play No, I’m Not a Human, a paranoia-fuelled horror game that developers Trioskaz released into the world yesterday, September 15th. I’ve finally got around to firing up the trusty RPS press account today and giving its first hour or so a go. Thus far, it’s got me thouroughly freaked, when I’m not roaring with laughter at just how wacky some of its characters have purposefully been made to look.

If you want an idea of what I mean, check out the collage of images further down. In the meantime, to set the scene, here’s the synopsis offered by the game’s Steam page:

Sunrise. Twilight of Earth. The world is ending. Acrid auromas of sun-scorched streets fill the air. Blackened corpses gnarled into shapes of agony line streets. Peering outside is enough to scorch eyes from the socket. The only refuge is in the night. But the night belongs to the Visitors. A knock on the door. A solitary voice, begging for refuge. They look like us. Talk like us. Smell like us. Are they us? Look for the signs.

As you can tell, it’s very much sunshine and rainbows stuff. You’re a faceless person living alone, in a house with the sort of perfectly eerie atmos you can only achieve by having someone’s grandparents consult on your decor. The sun is doing a thing, so everyone’s been forced to become nocturnal and remain indoors. That’s where the Visitors come in. They’re Lovecraftian creatures said to emerged from underground, equipped with the ability to almost perfectly mirror being human and an insatiable desire to sit on your sofa.

Image credit: Critical Reflex

You probably shouldn’t do what I did: let everyone in regardless of how much they look like creepy deformed putty. That is, unless you want to wake up to a notification iniforming you that it smells like someone died last night. In an effort to try and stop that from happening, you’ve got to use up your limited energy during the day to check the guests you’ve let in for apparent signs of being a Visitor you hear via the TV or radio. Stuff like having perfectly white teeth, bloodshot eyes, or muck under their fingernails. As you can imagine, the game has fun with all of these would-be symptoms of visitordom being things any regular person might have.

So far, I’ve managed to successfully identify and blow the head off of one Visitor, as well as ruthlessly execute a couple of people who must, in hindsight, have just been regular weirdos. There’s a wonderfully foreboding anticipation to waking up each night and hearing the knock that signals the start of a parade of new guests to consider letting in, though it might be better if their arrivals were a bit more spaced out, rather than one person rocking up the moment another leaves. The sense of isolation as the game gradually feeds you scraps of info from the outside world is quite absorbing too.

I also wish No, I’m Not a Human would let me save more freely. You can do so by downing bottles of khombucha, but you only get one to start off with, meaning that if you drink that early, you can easily lose a bunch of progress. I need that progress, Trioskaz. I need to see if the hazmat fiends will return my unsightly loo-dwelling sun-worshipper.

No, I’m Not a Human is out now on Steam, priced at discounted £11.51/$13.49/€13.31 until September 29th.

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Cosy builder Town to City feels like a lovely autumnal treat, but honestly I’m just having fun planting flowers

Town to City

I was terrified of answering the door before playing this freaky-faced apocalyptic horror, and honestly it hasn’t helped