River Towns

Have you ever played a game that is so good that you can’t stop talking about it? Every time you’re around friends and co-workers; all you want to do is tell people to try it out? Something that is so good that you’re practically shaking complete strangers on the street to get them to buy it? That’s how I feel about the new game River Towns, a SimCity-style management game that is more about building placement than day-to-day management. This is a speedy little puzzle game that will change the way you look at zoning. It’s also one of the best games I’ve played in years. Find out why when I review River Towns.

Don’t be overwhelmed by the board, because River Towns is surprisingly easy to get into. Think of it like a zoning game that combines the best elements of SimCity and Tetris. You’re trying to build a town for your settlers out of a set number of puzzle pieces, all of which represent different factions and shapes. The goal is to combine these pieces in such a way where you’ll complete the stage with a score high enough to get three stars.

Still confused? Let’s start at the beginning. After you drop the first piece into the water, the level’s rivers roar to life, allowing you to start building your city. Each level will have a series of Tetris-shaped pieces that are either the blue Freefolk, the purple Clergy or the red Nobels. With the very limited space you have, you’ll want to position each piece so that it’s neighboring another piece of the same color. You don’t want there to be any unused spots, as you’ll ultimately earn more points for how many similar tiles you’re neighboring.

Where this gets tricky is in the zoning. Because you’re often juggling several different types of pieces, you’re going to need to find a way to keep them separated, all while trying to grow each of them into the unused parts of the level. This can be tricky, because the different tiles will be competing for the limited space, and you’re not in control over the order of the pieces. Ideally, you will arrange the different zones so that it’s one large and unbroken part of the map when you run out of pieces, but that’s easier said than done.

As the game progresses, new wrinkles will be added to the scoring system. For example, some levels will have bonus objectives that you can complete to earn extra points. This starts out simple, like collecting gold and surrounding dead trees with tiles to bring them back to life. Other missions will have you covering geysers or constructing temples and other buildings, missions that will add a nice multiplier to your score at the end.

At a certain point in the game, you’ll start to get pieces that are half red and half blue, forcing you to make tough decisions about zoning. You’re suddenly forced to find new ways to connect the different colored zones, which may mean completely rethinking the flow of your city. Or maybe the pieces will be spread out, creating holes in your design that could be the difference between earning a high score or not. If you run into a piece you don’t like, you can pocket it, but watch out, because you can only skip one tile at a time.

You’ll also get neutral pieces and discover that building bridges between similarly-colored tiles is a great way to earn a few extra points. And that’s ultimately what this is all about. You’re never in a level for more than a few minutes, so every stage is about squeezing every last point out of the towns. Anybody can lay down a bunch of random tiles without worrying how they go together, but once you get into the scoring, it will become about putting the puzzle together in the most efficient way possible. The way where you’re not wasting any space and all of the zones are separate and connected. Once you start understanding how to earn the high scores, you’re going to spend every minute of the day trying to figure out how to get three stars on an especially tough stage. It was at this moment when I realized that I was addicted to River Towns.

The truth is, the signs were all there. For as much as I wanted to push on with the story and see what new wrinkles it could throw at me, I was more interested in replaying the earlier stages in hopes of earning the coveted three stars. This is not how I normally review a game. I’m not the kind of person who obsesses about earning the best score or getting the highest mark out of each level. Maybe I’ll pick away at a game after I’ve reviewed it, but rarely during. But I couldn’t help it. It ate at me that I kept coming up short of hitting three stars. Maybe I could get there if I had more bridges or managed the space a little better. I’m sure I’ll get it this time.

And then suddenly, before I knew it, I had sunk more than twenty hours into River Towns. And I wasn’t even done yet, because I had a whole section of the map that was completely unexplored. What I thought was going to be a short puzzle game with a fun gimmick quickly spiraled out of control, and I loved every second of it. There were a few days where the only thing I was thinking about was how to extract the maximum points from an especially tricky stage. I couldn’t wait to jump back in and complete it. That is a sign that you’re playing a truly special game.

What astonished me is that I couldn’t think of many games that scratched the same itch. Sure, the gameplay vaguely resembles a game like SimCity, but there isn’t a whole lot of management going on. And yes, the pieces certainly resemble something out of Tetris, however, that’s where the comparison ends. More than anything else, River Towns reminds me of Rampart. Not the bits where you’re firing cannons, but rather the other half, where you’re trying to build and repair a giant wall around your kingdom. That’s essentially what you’re doing here, but the scoring is different.

All I know is that it’s fun. And not just fun for a little while, but the kind of game I couldn’t get enough of. And, thankfully, there’s a ton of content to puzzle through in River Towns. Not only do we get dozens of levels in the single-player campaign, but there are daily challenge stages and even user-created levels. There’s a whole editor in the game that will let you run your own river and lay down a bunch of obstacles. I wish there was an easier way to curate and sort the best new stages, but my mouth waters at the thought of nearly unlimited challenges.

River Towns doesn’t have a lot of problems, but there are a few things that I will nitpick. For one thing, I wish the game either had a single-use undo button or a way to see the next card in the stack. I can understand if some people wouldn’t want to play that way, but it would have been nice to have an option. Also, the four areas don’t offer a lot of variety in the stages. While each part of the map offers unique obstacles and bonus missions, there’s a sameness to the backgrounds that got to me after a while. There needs to be a little more variety in the locations, even if it’s just a cosmetic difference.

Despite the somewhat limited locations, River Towns still looks fantastic. It’s a simple game, but I like the look of the different buildings and puzzle pieces. There’s a real charm to the city, and that extends to some of the stages you have to build up. You’ll sometimes see the bones of what look like dinosaurs or wild animals, hinting at a much more dangerous world just beyond our sight. Plus, it’s just cool to see what each city looks like when you’ve run out of cards and the points get added up.

The truth is, it wouldn’t matter what the game looked like, because the core gameplay is so much fun. You could make it look like an old school Game Boy game and it would still be great. Maybe a little harder to play, but still great. And that’s what I hope this review conveys. River Towns isn’t just another fun game, it’s an exceptional puzzler that I’m going to be thinking about for a long time to come. I love this game.