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Townscaper has a generous demo that runs in your browser

Build towns while the boss ain't looking

Townscaper is a delightful toy and only costs £4.79/€5 from Steam. Maybe you really want to play it on work computers, though, so here you go: a Townscaper web demo playable right in your browser.

Townscaper is about pulling little towns from the sea. You playfully, experimentally click to make the buildings grow, and procedural magic forms stairs, windows, and rooftops around your clicks. It's a big box of jumbled lego to click together and see what you make. It was updated steadily through early access before its final August launch.

Watch on YouTube

The web version is more or less the game in its entirety, but with a much smaller grid on which to build. The inability to make more sprawling villages is important, but it's still absurdly generous as demos go.

Creator Oskar Stålberg is no stranger to browser toys. Back in 2015, long before making Townscaper, he released several procedural playthings including Brick Block, an archipelago generator and a city map generator. Brick Block is a clear ancestor of Townscaper. In 2016, he released a browser planet generator. They're all fun. (He also, in-between, made minimalist RTS Bad North).

The URL changes as you build things in the web demo, so you can link folks to your creations. Here's something I tapped out while writing this post.

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