Town to City (Early Access)

Town to City was provided by Kwalee for review. Thank you!

This is an early access title, so our final thoughts on Town to City will most likely change as it develops. This review is based on our thoughts of the initial release of the game.

If you're after a relaxing take on a city builder, then Town to City is probably right up your alley. Rather than managing busy traffic intersections and power needs, Town to City takes us back to the basics with an emphasis on designing the layout of your city above all else. Then, it's simply a case of placing the necessities near your housing and it's smiley faces all around!

That is, of course, a double-edged sword. If you are after an in-depth city builder that requires complex planning and strategic thinking, then Town to City might not be for you, but if you do want to have complete control over how your city looks and get joy out of crafting your ideal town, then this is the game you want.

You'll start the game with an empty plot of land, with only a railway station to deliver your first citizens. As your citizens arrive, each will have different desires. Some may want to be in a house near water, others near cliffs, and some might want to be away from other houses. It's your job to build homes in the right positions and relocate families to maximize their "happiness", allowing you to move in more inhabitants, letting you progress through the game's tech tree and unlock new buildings to bring even more happiness.

The progression is relaxed, and like everything in Town to City, you can do it at your own pace. You passively earn research points over time, which you can then spend to unlock new buildings, upgrades, or decorations. This gradually changes the appearance of your city over time, from quaint single-story buildings to more advanced multi-story structures.

As you progress, you will get more "demanding" citizens, but really, their demands are quite trivial compared to most city builders. They merely want to be somewhat near a shoemaker or near some other luxury building, but they have large ranges, so it's pretty lenient. Plus, relocating citizens is easy, with just a click of a button to change their house.

Your citizens can also request that you do favors for them, like beautifying the area around their house, in exchange for money, but again, this can be done at your own time and pace. This game is all about design and form, not necessarily efficiency and strategy. You'll spend just as much time placing fences, trees, and flowers as drawing free-form roads and placing buildings.

Visually, Town to City keeps the quaint theme going, with a bright and warm, though not cartoony, feel. It really lends itself to the relaxing and carefree nature of the game. The music likewise is very laidback in its vibe, using accordions and other instruments you might envisage on a Parisian street. Some background birdsong and bug noises exemplify the rural nature of your "city."

As far as I can tell, you can't really lose; you're always gaining money, and you can divert your workforce to the relevant places if you make a mistake, so if you are after a citybuilder that's more on the relaxing side, give this one a look, manually drawing your roads, placing buildings and decorations that aren't snapped to grids, they're a luxury in this genre, and the game does it well.

As an early access title, the game will undergo more changes before its 1.0 launch. According to the Steam store page, they plan to add a new town with its own mechanics, additional buildings and animals, and some quality-of-life tweaks.

Town to City - Steam Deck Performance

Town to City doesn't strictly have controller support, but it has been designed with Steam Deck in mind, and the game does run you through a quick overview of Deck controls when you start a game if you are playing on a Deck. The game also runs in 1280x800 resolution.

Continuing the Steam Deck support theme, the game defaults to a "Steam Deck" preset, and I think it's good, so I wouldn't adjust your graphical settings. The game looks pretty decent, and it should hold 30 FPS fairly well, even later. We use 1280x800 as the resolution and a 30 FPS in-game frame limit.

In my town, which reached 400 citizens (out of a max of 1000, although you can limit the game to 500 and still unlock everything), the game was still running around 40-50 FPS, meaning a stable 30 is easily possible. The power draw was around 12-15W, with temperatures around 60 °C. Steam Deck OLEDs should get around 3.5 hours of playtime, with LCDs around 2.5 hours.

Accessibility:

All dialogue in Town to City is text-based. The UI scaling defaults to max (120%), which helps make most text easy to read.

Conclusion:

Town to City is a delightfully relaxing city builder. This one is all about the little details, and people who want their city will enjoy all the little decorations you can place around your city. Those who want production chains and strategy should look elsewhere, as there's none here.

Performance on the Steam Deck is pretty good, and it should hold a stable 30 FPS throughout, even with a larger city. Plus, the developers have clearly put time into the game on Deck, thanks to pre-optimized settings and a tutorial pop-up explaining the controls.

Our review is based on the PC version of this game.

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