City building games have been branching out into other genres over the last decade. One of my favourite new sub-genres is when a puzzle game takes on a city builder’s clothes (or vice versa) and this brings me to River Towns. All the gameplay makes it look like a city builder, but River Towns has more in common with Tetris, Chime, and settlement board games than a city builder. Regardless, River Towns had me engrossed from the first puzzle to the last as it asks players to score high with optimal settlements.
The goal in each level of River Towns is to score as many points as possible. Each level is a grid with a river running through it. You must choose your starting spot on that river, and then you’ll be off and away, placing your settlements. Settlements must slot next to an existing settlement or an adjoining path; otherwise, the move can’t be made. As each settlement is its own shape, maybe a T, L, square, or zig-zag, you’ll need to rotate them around and slot them together as you best see fit. There are three different types of settlement, each with its own colour, and you’ll largely want to group them together as you get a score bonus for the biggest town of connected settlements for each colour. Pretty soon, you’ll start running into space problems, and deciding what to place where becomes tricky. If you can lay everything down, great. If not, you can end a game early and hope you’ve scored enough to earn stars to unlock the following levels and worlds.
What starts out as a beautiful-looking Tetris terraformer gets more interesting very quickly. Each colour of settlement has its own unique tile set, but they stay the same each round. This means you’ll know what tiles you will need to place down. The trick is that the order they are drawn from the deck will be random each time, meaning you can’t rely on the same tactics over and over again. Yet there is still familiarity with what you are playing with. Each level has a unique layout, and throughout the game, more ways to score points are introduced. Surround temples to score bonus points. Clergy settlements can connect to churches for bonus points. You can collect building resources scattered around levels to build a lighthouse for points. Geysers need to be built on top of to divert pressure to other geysers, eventually blowing up pathways to new areas. Levels expand and stretch out, introducing paths to connect disparate towns together to cross large distances with limited turns. Evil crystals need to be smashed to cleanse the land. All these things add on more points, plus every time you build on both sides of the river, a bridge is constructed for double points. With so many choices, there are lots of ways to change plans and still aim for 3 stars for each level, even when the tile order has been harsh and tricky.
Backing you up along the way are some lovely graphics and simple controls. You can zoom in and out, rotate the camera, see the towns have some very tiny people run around in them, and just generally look like fantasy beauties. A baroque folk soundtrack fits the mood perfectly, too. The campaign mode is generous, especially if you want to 3-star every level. Beyond that, there are daily challenges to keep you busy. If you are creative, there is an extremely easy-to-understand level editor, too. The editor works like a Picross screen, painting the grid with the river and obstacles you want in the level, before deciding what tiles the player is allowed to take in. Once played, it is uploaded to the Steam Workshop, where I’m sure you’ll find a treasure trove of levels over time to enjoy.
Whilst some may lament that this is all about tile placement and clever grouping of tile types, I found River Towns engaging to play, with lots of room for player creativity to battle against the controlled RNG elements for each round played. It is also fairly bite-sized. A level can be done within three minutes, with the larger ones taking maybe up to ten minutes max. With tons of replayability, a level editor, online leaderboards per level, and new challenges cycling in all the time, River Towns is a great recommendation for anyone looking for quickfire block placement puzzling, where you can take as long as you want each turn. Challenging without pouring too much complexity in, River Towns scratched an itch I didn’t know I had. Recommended.
Review copy provided by the publisher. River Towns is out now.
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