Ophelia Payne

My love for city builders is becoming more evident as I have covered a lot of them recently and played even more that I haven’t covered.  The latest to come across my path is Towerfolk, developed and published by 99 Interactive. It is a calm, medieval city builder and resource management game, and it has a simple charm to it that kept me engaged for hours the first time I played it.

When you first start, you will pick the starting location for your city. Each point out the benefits, like enemies only being able to attack from one direction. You will also pick your difficulty level; I always pick easy. In Towerfolk, easy means more coins and fewer attacks, among other things.  You will pick the name of your city and a flag, and you’ll be on your way with the tutorial. 

First, start out with a fishing hut; you people will need food and housing. As you grow and construct homes, resource production buildings and even military structures for defence, your aim is to keep your settlement happy. They will let you know what they require, and it’s your job to manage the resources required. You can open trade routes with nearby settlements as well, but in the beginning, this will take a lot of money to start, and trading requires a balance too.  

As your settlement gets larger, you will need to purchase nearby land to expand. Each parcel of land will have different resources that you can claim and process: wood, stone, ore, etc. You can build fields for grain, raise animals and bake bread. Most items can also be part of the trading mentioned earlier.

Towerfolk isn’t the most beautiful or detailed city builder I have played, but there was something cozy and charming with its more simplistic style.  I loved the medieval music playing in the background as well.

Since I was playing on easy, I didn’t experience a lot of raids or thieves; however, I am slightly embarrassed to admit that I didn’t understand how to use my newly trained militia to stop the raids either, so that was probably a good thing. I would have liked a little more tutorial on these things. Perhaps it was there, and I missed it. I was able to build defences, but my militia didn’t seem to do anything. I am glad I wasn’t playing on a greater difficulty. I may have lost a lot more resources.

A lot of things I learned through trial and error, and while I don’t mind some of that, feeling lost is never fun. I couldn’t understand why I couldn’t hunt or raise animals, and then I remembered a quick step at the beginning where I had to research something, and lo and behold, I had to use resources to research these things to open them. Once I realized that, I had a much better experience.

The Steam page also mentions things like balancing quarrels between soldiers and other potential disputes among your settlement’s inhabitants. I didn’t see any of that. Perhaps I did a good job at keeping them fed, safe and secure after all.

Towerfolk is currently in early access, meaning the game can still change over time before a full and complete launch.  The notes on the Steam page indicate they are hoping to add more production lines, population mechanics and a few other new things as well. I don’t mind supporting smaller games in early access if the price is right, and Towerfolk won’t break the bank. I look forward to more content though, as I found myself wanting more from the game than just building and trading.

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

**Special thanks to Keymailer for the review code**