My town simulations experience is limited. I have only played Age of Empires many moons ago, but even so, I still have fond memories of the game. The simulation strategy genre thrives on mobile, since there are tons of town simulator games on there. Mobile gamers can take their time choosing their next time consuming game. Now, with the Nintendo Switch, there are but a few of this type of games, and fans of the genre can look forward to medieval town simulator Townsmen.
With Townsmen, the first couple of hours were spent in the amazingly detailed tutorial, which consists of six stages that teach you the basics of building and managing your resources efficiently. Also, it is really important to start here first, even if you are familiar with this type of game, since the tutorial is part of the overall history of the game. You play the role of a noble who was accused of a crime you didn’t commit. To avoid the death penalty, you are sent to a backwater town. Here, through great town managing skills, you can clear your name and make the forgotten town prosper all the way to a metropolis. Luckily, you are not alone in your endeavor, and with the advise of your counselors, you might make it work.
Now, for your town to prosper, you must take special care in having enough food to keep your townies happy and also make them produce enough resources to keep the town afloat. Happiness of the townies is important here, since their happiness has a lot of influence in several factors, like production. The happier they are, the more they produce and the more your town prospers. Also, if they are happy, you can raise the taxes more and get more money to your treasury. Money is really important since is needed for building. If you need more townies to work, you can build houses (you need at least one worker to build them). When you do, a family moves to your town, and you have more townies to work for you.
Speaking of building mining, here is one of the most necessary activities, since rock is a indispensable resource. It is important to have someone mining rocks and minerals constantly. But what happens when each building has reached top production and there is no more space to store? Well, this is were the peddler comes through. Here you can sell the excess of resources. However there are two things to consider: 1) The peddler can only take one hundred items (you can choose which items to sell until you get to one hundred), and 2) He arrives to your town in three minutes intervals, so you need to sell things as soon as the peddler arrives. You can also purchase things from him, but they are normally more expensive to buy than to produce (example: if you purchase an armor, it costs forty gold pieces a piece, but if you sell he only gives you twenty-two.
Another interesting mechanic in the game is the weather mechanic. Sometimes its sunny and overall good. Sometimes it rains even with thunderclouds, and because of that, there is a chance of lighting strikes and a house catch fire. There is a building that can help you with the water tower. This building’s purpose is to stop fires of houses near to it, so it’s important to have several of these just in case. When winter comes, the landscape changes completely from green to white. Here you need to have hunters to bring food, since your farmers cannot produce wheat nor the windmills flour (so you can put those townies to use by becoming hunters). There is also a sandbox mode in which you can play and do a series of missions that will grant you bonus to continue playing. Here you can change several settings like activating or not the bandit raids, so basically you can play with your own rules. This gives the game even more replay value.
Graphically, the game looks good with a top down isometric view. The buildings look well-detailed, and the townies look kind of cute. Te music is really good. I like that when things are fine, the music is mellow and peaceful, but when things are dire–like when bandits attack –the music changes to a sense of urgency and danger. There is a good balance, and the gibberish the characters do when talking or when the townies need something to finish a task is overall funny and do not bore.
Bottom Line: Townsmen is a good entry game into the simulation genre, and it feels right at home in the Nintendo Switch. Featuring a really interesting campaign mode and a sandbox mode in which you can play by your rules, this is a gem in which you will sink many hours of game time. For any gamer on a budget, this is the right fit.
A Review copy was provided for this review.