Gamer Thumb interviews Leigh and Rohan Harris from Flat Earth Games to learn more about the conception and execution of what is being heralded as a return to form for time management games on the iPad, TownCraft.
Towncraft is a town builder a heart, but by looks and gameplay, is basically a mix of pre-sim-city cities (towns), and Facebook's Farmville app. It's been developed by both Flat Earth Games(Metrocide) and Epiphany Games (Frozen Hearth), though the latter are responsible for the games' publishing. The game was originally made for tablets and has been ported, and the developers specifically say in their Q&A that "it will not look like a mobile game", however I feel they've sort of lost that immediately, because towncraft looks identical to a mobile game. In fact, it is a mobile game. The difference primarily being that there are no transactions, no freemium nonsense or DLC's, just a plain and simple build of a game that gets its updates. Surprisingly the game is in its post 1.0 versions, though over the course of the game, I felt like I was playing an Early Access title. There's an awful lot of complexity, but it appears as though the complexity suddenly stops when you want more.
Gamer's Palace: "Towncraft is basically really a cute game that is much more complex than many other mobile titles - However, only at first glance. The experimenting with the recipes can be fun in the long run, even if many players will tend to look at a guide.
But while Towncraft is already rather designed to be played in short sessions, you may lose your motivation very fast with the PC version: The controls are imprecise and the scrolling without touch a horror, various AI fails and other technical flaws are really unnerving. The price for TownCraft should really not be higher than 9,99€!"
A port of a mobile game that’s less engaging, less exciting, and more expensive than it needs to be.
Full review by Cory Galliher on Popzara
This app sucked. Rating: 3/7(imho).