Towns

[Jatta Pake]

Unfinished Steam Game Abandoned After Thousands Bought It

 

 

 

Thoughts?  I never played it but sad to see a Sandbox game go.

 

[Realmkeeper]

It's a shame that it's being left as is, but not entirely unexpected.

I had followed it a little before it came on Greenlight, and bought it shortly after it was released after being greenlit. Right from the get-go, it was a little overly ambitious, but was great fun to play.

For it's price, it was totally worth it - I got about 50 hours of playing in. If they had ever got around to addressing the broken AI, then perhaps it could have been a great all-round game. But the frustrating stupidity of your townsfolk ended up being the killer every playthrough.

[EnigmaGrey]

They had a great demo on Desura quite a long time ago, back when it was predominantly a ~medieval town builder and dungeon-crawl.

How much of that is left?

[Realmkeeper]

They had a great demo on Desura quite a long time ago, back when it was predominantly a ~medieval town builder and dungeon-crawl.

How much of that is left?

Is left?

It's still predominantly a town builder come dungeon crawler (indeed, nothing's really changed since I bought it around late November 2012, I think there's been perhaps two minor updates since then to fix game-breaking bugs, or extend the gameplay a little), but once you start to have something sizeable, and are feeling like a bit of a champion, the AI complexity starts to take it's toll.

Six or seven floors down into a dungeon, and you're mining a bit of whatever, you get townsfolk coming up to the surface to store the ore in containers, when there's perfectly good empty containers down in the dungeon. Oh, and along the way, bringing the ore up, they'll most likely run into some hostiles and either get themselves killed or attract some town guards into combat - drawing them away from exploring or patrolling whatever you set them to do.

 

I think that perhaps they were a bit ambitious with the scope of what the townsfolk could do, with minimal direction from the player, as well as the dreadful UI which was always a bit broken and non-user-friendly.

Planning to build a town on the surface, with mines going just a couple of floors deep, with farms and forestry serving the townsfolk's needs? No worries, Towns is a pretty sleek game for that.

Wanting to build a heavily fortified, half-underground emcampment with tunnels reaching down into the darkness of 10 or more levels, and an army of warriors with minimal townsfolk keeping stocks of food? You'll quickly either ragequit from frustration that your NPCs seem to be looking to get themselves killed, or ragequit at frustration that your NPCs are dying of starvation when there's a barrel of food almost right next to them (or they're too busy completing a task the long way, to serve their own needs for sleep and food).

[harakka]

If you buy games based on what they are, instead what they could one day be or have been, Towns is still plenty of fun. I got it reeeally long time ago because it seemed like a nice more construction focused Dwarf Fortress lite, and it matched my expectations quite well. They had some game breaking bugs early on, but ever since those were fixed I've enjoyed it a lot.

[RoboMat]

It also amuses me that people with 200+ hours game time say that they have been "ripped off".

[Batsphinx]

I find it really sad, because they were always our Desura and Greenlight buddies to an extent. Don't want to get into the particulars of it all, and I don't really know them from Adam, but it's horrible to see it end up this way.

[harakka]

In a more general context, this was bound to happen eventually. Devs can lose interest in the project, suffer from various debilitating issues both professional or personal, or just are plain unable to continue because of lack of funding. Especially with alphafunding games you have to buy because of what's already there or just to support the devs, otherwise you're bound to get disappointed sooner or later.

[nasKo]

It wasn't much of a surprise if you've followed the game.

 

I understand the guy's reason behind it (moebius I mean), being hired a bit over a month ago and then not being able to make enough money off of it sucks.

 

What I don't like and understand is how they think they could make it all better by hinting at a possible Towns 2.

 

Even now that Xavi mentioned a big dev/publisher might take over, and if it fails, he would just hire someone else, it's a mystery to me.

 

I feel like it leaves a bad taste for people of buying into Early Access games at all, even though Towns was not marketed as such because it was released a few months before Steam's launch of Early Access.

[zombo]

In a more general context, this was bound to happen eventually. Devs can lose interest in the project, suffer from various debilitating issues both professional or personal, or just are plain unable to continue because of lack of funding.

Too much crowdsourced funding can also kill a project (gaming or whatever) by eliminating necessity/motivation.  It's an easy trap to fall into when you get money with no legal obligation to finish.  Not saying that happened with Towns, just saying it's another potential reason for abandonment, especially if you combine it with loss of interest and/or any of those other factors.