Shantytown Review – Small town, big impact

I hadn’t heard much about ShantyTown before I came across the demo during Steam Next Fest. Developed by Erik Rempen and published by Kinephantom Games, I was immediately taken by the graphic style and its simplistic look. What greeted me was deeper and more complex than expected, and I loved all the details.

ShantyTown is a cozy builder where you place objects and buildings on a 3D diorama. You take on the role of a surveyor, building and photographing in 20 locations. Each location has its own optional requirements and its own challenges. You are encouraged to build up instead of outwards, like you see in most building games. You will make good use of rotating your camera to find the perfect placement of each item. As your location grows and you complete upgrades, you will unlock more items and buildings to use in your creations. This gives you more ways to shape your towns. Each item placed shows you an orb representing the area of influence of each item. This helps with knowing how the item you are about to place might influence the town.

The final step in each level is taking a photo in-game of your charming and cluttered masterpiece. The camera tools have quite a few options to make your photograph perfect.

I was really taken by how these small-footprint shanty towns had an intrinsic beauty, and I found myself exploring nooks and crannies, adding small details in alleys and on decks, and installing neon signs and beautiful lanterns throughout the towns. Providing things like electricity, satellites, air conditioning, etc. to homes and shops helps these town grow and reach their full potential.

This is a cozy and casual game, where there are no wrong answers. There are no time constraints and no pressure. You can follow your imagination, fitting everything into a dense living space that just feels right. All of this charm is accompanied by a beautiful soundtrack crafted by vaporwave artist Macroblank.

The full game will be released on April 16^th, and I can’t wait to dive into the full thing.

Until next time…be good to yourself and be good to each other.

**Thank you to Keymailer for supplying the review code**