von Freedom, whether it be via travel or starting your own enterprise, can be common ambitions and dreams. In Townseek, you can do both in an incredibly cute world inhabited by a variety of humanoid characters based on sharks, cats, bunnies, and many more. However, this game is more than just its aesthetics as a fun, rewarding, gameplay loop underpins the whole thing.
While the term “cozy” gets used a lot to described these sort of games, it is incredibly true with Townseek. From the art style that is reminiscent of a hand drawn storybook which makes it feel like the whole thing is a comfy bedtime story accompanied by calming piano in the background. This story is simple. A long time ago, a shark named Sir Reginald discovered a new mineral he named Sharknite which allowed for airships and for sharks to walk out of water. He kept a journal but over the years the pages were lost. One of his descendants, Capt. Jawline, sends you out to collect those pages which means communicating a lot with neighboring towns.
The simple story bellies its simple gameplay loop. You fly an airship around discovering landmarks and visiting towns. Flying around is a joy. The artwork and animations are gorgeous and the soundtrack is soothing as you travel around. Furthermore, the places you visit, whether its towns or landmarks, are creative a cute and range from a waterfall of acrylics to a cave of bodybuilding bunnies. The towns though are the main places you will be spending time in.
In these towns, you have three options. The first, thing is quests. Usually this involves delivering goods or dropping people off at a landmark or collecting something. Completing the quests reward you with money and experience which can level up the town and thus unlock more options for questions and what goods are available to buy. This is also the main way you progress the story. Second, is the mercantile aspect. Each town has their own inventory, ranging from comfy sweaters, to fridge magnets to pretzels. These towns also have somewhat dynamic pricing based on what they produce, need and want which will makes the prices rise and fall. These things are different for each town and thus allow for an optimization if you want to get the most bang for your buck. However, even if you don’t optimize the buying and selling, I found with the quests and as long as you don’t make intentionally bad trades, money was never really a problem once you got going. However, different regions use different currencies so the are small soft resets basked into the economy which, depending on your temperament and how easy it is to get up and running, could lead to some frustration. The last thing to do is talk with the host of the town. This is where you learn more about the characters, the towns and their relationships. It is also where you can learn some more information which may help with optimizing the buying and selling.
While the buying and selling is the main gameplay mechanic, there are a variety of other things to do. These include taking pictures, fishing, mining, and digging. While none of these were particularly engaging or complex, they were fun and added to the game without anything becoming a problem or taking away from the enjoyment. Furthermore it is also just enjoyable to fly around as you can customize your airship and stumble upon different things to collect whether they are in flying crates or shooting stars that crashed into the ground.
Townseek was by far the game that pleasantly surprised me the most. While initially drawn in by the artwork, the core gameplay loop is what kept me interested. While the idea of going town-to-town to buy and sell goods may seem simple, there are enough extra bits so that it never becomes monotonous and, between the artwork and music, every second spent in the world was enjoyable. It is the only game I really kept having thoughts of going back to for my own enjoyment and took pictures to send to friends of cute little details throughout.
Ultimately, Townseek will survive based on its gameplay mechanics and if they are deep and varied enough to last through the playtime. However, for the short playtime of the demo, whether it was just the gameplay loops or the combinations of the aesthetic as a whole, I never found myself bored or wanting more or even something else. Townseek quickly went from a game I had no idea about to one I am looking forward to the full release and I highly recommend anyone unsure to at least try out the adventure while it’s still a free bite-sized journey to see if you want to invest on the full venture when it releases.
Demo Deep Dive is a series looking at upcoming games via available demos to be able to give an impression on everything from the aesthetics to the sounds to, most importantly, how they play. Hopefully you find this series enjoyable, informative, and ultimately helpful both to inform you of games while also promoting games that you may otherwise not have heard of.
This demo for Townseek is available until September 30th via the ID@Xbox Xbox Selects Demo Fest.
Image: https://www.pexels.com/photo/three-gray-and-white-xbox-controller-2106215/
