Townsmen 1.14.7

When I first noticed that city building games have appeared on the Play Store, I was very excited. Those classic games, such as The Settlers, Caesar, and Stronghold have stolen long hours of my life. Imagine then my disappointment upon realizing that, instead of production chains, mobile games feature endless structure leveling and, instead of resource balancing, you get to tap on coins every so often. After several attempts at these games, I was starting to lose hope. But then I discovered a little wonder.

Townsmen is a village building simulator which, although it retains some of the mobile freemium traits, it mostly resembles a traditional medieval town builder, not so dissimilar to The Settlers. The basic gameplay consists of a balancing act between the development of the town and the happiness level of your townies. The happier you can keep your populace, the more work you will get done.

You always start with the castle, to remind you that there is no civilization without a rightful leader. You also begin with a woodcutter's hut, a fisherman's hut and two houses for your townies. Each house comes with two workers and their spouses. The worker, or towny, can be assigned to any job, while the townette tends the house, bringing in water, food, while she lightens the mood. Townettes also enjoy shopping in the market for fancy clothes and jewelry. They are, essentially a town's happiness barometer. If they are content, then their husbands are content which in turn will work more efficiently and can, ultimately, shoulder a higher taxation level without revolting.

What is refreshing with Townsmen, being a mobile game, is the importance of the spacial aspect. Different map layouts offer benefits and challenges, depending on the available building space and resource proximity. You can place your new buildings almost anywhere but, depending on their production, if you put them too far from others, then you will experience a sub-optimal workflow.

The economic chain is not overly complicated, but it requires some patience and forethought to grow it efficiently. Many industries need primary products to function. For example, farming produces wool and wheat which can later be converted into clothes and bread. The Metallurgy chain needs metal from mines, which is then smelted using charcoal (from wood) and finally turned into valuable tools.

There's also a military aspect. Raiders can come to your town to steal and pillage, but your stalwart knights will fight them off; If they have enough sausages and beer in their belly that is.

There are quite a few more details to the game, but exploring the possibilities is half the fun, and I wouldn't want to spoil it.

Final Thoughs

Townsmen is a delightful game that, even though it suffers a bit from coin tapping, it is otherwise a city builder through and through, featuring a strong development tree and cutesy graphics. The free version has a small limitation and includes a permanent ad banner, but otherwise, it is fully playable and enjoyable.