No complex traffic, power or infrastructure management here-just left clicking to place a tile (a street at water level, a brightly-coloured house anywhere above that), and right clicking to delete it. A kind of Lego set for building picturesque, cobbled villages as cosy or as sprawling as your imagination desires. Townscaper isn’t a game so much as it is a virtual toy. Just plenty of building and plenty of beauty. I’ve used the nighttime screenshot above as my current desktop. The result is quite cute no matter how big or complex.

Your only real options are the choice of colour in the structures, where to place a block, and how tall you want to build. Instead, you build a “city” on the water using simple mouse clicks (left mouse button to add, right to remove). Townscaper is not actually a game, but rather a virtual toy or a digital thought experiment there are no quests, no accomplishments to pursue, no wins or losses, no scores to keep. You can try a somewhat limited online version of it to see how it works by clicking the link in this paragraph. It’s money well spent, methinks, as a fan of city-builder and simulation games. This week I discovered Townscaper and picked it up while it was on sale on Steam for about $6 (tax included, albeit a little more post-sale also available for Android, Xbox, and iOS platforms). As a longtime gamer, I am always looking for new forms of computer and online entertainment for my PC.

Townscaper 3d print