Tinytown

Tinytown (2024) is a creative puzzle game where you build and refine a miniature living-breathing city out of tiles. Play is simple yet strategic: you must place each tile to maximise your score and make efficient use of the limited space until you fill-up the grid. It stands out from other city-building games for its focus on intricate point-scoring over aesthetics and the tactical layer that it adds.

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You start each round with a blank grid and randomly draw pieces to place. These range from houses, parks and shops to factories, warehouses and car parks - some of which can only be placed next to a road piece. Each piece you place scores you points and affects one or more of your city’s four attributes: population, industry, energy and society. These may be amplified depending on the piece’s proximity to other tiles. For example, a Park tile increases your societal attribute by one for each home it is adjacent to. When your attributes surpass certain milestones, you can pick your piece for the next turn, providing a level of control over your resources.

As you progress, you can upgrade buildings by placing similar ones on top of them, gaining more points and increasing their effects without taking up further space. Once you inevitably run out of space on your grid the round is over and the points are totalled to reward balanced management of attributes. With practice, you can develop your strategy in placing pieces and picking them when possible to achieve the highest scores.

The result is a game that takes city-building in a highly strategic direction while preserving its cute, creative aspect. The point-scoring is reminiscent of board games, offering a good challenge and rewarding forward-thinking.

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Our examiner, Jake Kendall, first checked Tinytown 14 months ago. It was re-examined by Thom Robertson and updated 5 weeks ago.