Build, Bake, Chop and Dig in the relaxing world of TownCraft for iPad. Flat Earth Games brings crafting to a new level with their new international release.
Independent games are a beautiful thing. Ideas that excite specific gamers become reality and concepts rejected by companies become available to play by all.
Towncraft is an experience for iPad crafted by the two-man Australian development team, Flat Earth Games. It has a lot in common with some games you may be familiar with but there is nothing quite like it.
Build your town how you want it.
The title, TownCraft, covers exactly what the game is all about. Chop this, dig that, combine the two and place it. You build increasingly more complicated items as you discover their recipes through experimentation and place your town piece by piece in a little sandbox, just like you did in primary school, only this time there are no burly sixth graders to come along and stomp it to the ground.
Craft up a storm
There’s no recipe index to help you out here, it’s mostly trial and error. The crafting system is rather intuitive though so using common sense will see you through with most things. Like in Minecraft you can heat sand in a furnace to create glass, TownCraft takes it to another level though by allowing you to combine glass panes with iron poles to create windows, for example.
I would encourage giving it a fair go yourself with combining different items. If you’re stuck a little bit too long you could take a peek at some of the community managed sites that like TownCraft Wiki.
You’ll start off with these basic crafting, creating tools and benches. From there you may graduate to planting and cultivating crops or making tables and wood furniture to outfit houses. Bake bread, brew cider, forge armour or even build birdhouses.
Let your imagination guide you
You must relish the experience. Build the town that can only be a product of your imagination and walk the path of discovery that leads to it. If you were one of the kids that would build for hours when a box of Lego or a bucket or Playdoh was placed in front of them TownCraft may very well be for you.
As the little boy who preferred to play with Ninja Turtle action figures and throw Playdoh in the girls’ hair you may find the pace a little slow.
Overall {rating}
To make such a sandbox world builder in a development team of only two people is quite an adventurous task and one that Flat Earth Games has pulled off quite nicely. It of course lacks the polish of a game made by a larger development studio but functions quite well.
If you’re looking for a slow-paced game and enjoy making stuff give TownCraft a go.
TownCraft by Flat Earth Games is available for iPad, the team hopes to release it on other devices, eventually, as well.
