River Towns

Release Date: March 24, 2025

Strategy, puzzle elements, tetris, crowdfunding, indie games, singleplayer

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Steam

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A hybrid of a strategy game and a logic game, inspired by the cult Tetris. River Towns is about building the titular settlements while dealing with a limited space. Buildings are represented by various tiles from different districts. As we progress we get new tile types and tougher challenges.

River Towns is a production on the border of strategy and logic games, inspired by the iconic Tetris. It was developed by the independent Swedish Frogsong Studios, which has in its portfolio warmly received Spellsworn and D-Corp. Is creation was made possible partially thanks to a successful crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter.

Gameplay

In River Towns we watch events in an isometric view.

Main objectives

The gameplay takes place on small maps intersected by rivers, and our primary task is to build cities from ready-made "tiles" in such a way as to accommodate as many buildings as possible in a limited area. Over time, the game expands the range of challenges set before us, making us collect gold, grow trees, or rebuild old monuments.

All of this makes each subsequent map a kind of puzzle, requiring us to have spatial planning skills and the ability to think several moves ahead.

Building cities like Tetris

The elements with which we build settlements have been diversified in terms of shapes and colors (determined randomly). These characteristics reflect their affiliation to particular districts.

Areas colored in blue and yellow are inhabited by so-called Free People abound in slender buildings based on simple geometric shapes. The orange-colored buildings that make up the affluent Old Noble district are characterized by their large size, while the purple district of Clergy of the Eel consists of irregular buildings, which are often difficult to find a suitable place for.

Scoring

Although the game allows us to scatter individual buildings all over the city, placing them wherever we have space for them, it's not worth doing it. Our actions are scored and a clear division of the city into districts (and consequently - placing structures of specific colors in such a way as to form larger clusters) gives us a bonus to the final score. This is important because we gain access to subsequent levels after obtaining the required number of points.

Photo mode and leaderboards

The icing on the cake is the photo mode, which allows us to immortalize the fruits of our labor. We can boast about the results we achieved using online rankings.

Videos and Screens

[0:52] River Towns - Launch Trailer

[0:47] River Towns - Gameplay Trailer

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