‘Townscaper’ lets you establish seaside cities

“Townscaper,” an early access video game on Steam from Swedish game developer Oskar Stalberg, lets you instantly build cozy coastal towns.

You start with a blank canvas: blue sky, empty sea. Controls are limited to placing one block at a time. Blocks placed on water become harbors, and blocks placed atop other blocks make rising towers, apartments and houses. You can undo and redo block placement and change colors.

And that’s about it. Clump blocks together to form unusual architecture, like a cityscape held in the air by many small metal rods that extend into the sea below, or mix and match colors to make a single building with many different colorful compartments. You learn as you tinker. Deleting blocks can make arches or terraces, and enclosed spaces generate gardens within.

“Townscaper” has a hidden algorithm that instantly adds little flourishes to your creation. Many of these are small and randomized. These include coin-operated binoculars appearing on paths, seagulls perched on rooftops (they fly off if you change the structure under them), and a string of paper flags strewn between buildings in alleyways. Much of the fun is rooted in the magical unknown.

Minimalist sound design, like the bubbling of water or the “pop” when you layer blocks, is inconsequential to the gameplay but adds satisfaction.

Players have made grandiose creations, some building replicas of architecture found in pop culture like The Lord of The Rings or Tetris. Others have drawn on their own imagination. “Townscaper” is gaining traction on social media: A quick search of #Townscaper on Twitter yields hundreds of results.

The game is still in early stages of development. Described by Stalberg as an “experimental game” and “more of a toy” than a game, “Townscaper” could change based on user feedback. “I want to see how people interact with ‘Townscaper’ to help me figure out what direction to take it and what features to add,” he wrote.