Go Go Town!

Who would want to be a mayor? For every issue you fix, five new ones seem to rear their ugly heads. And yet, the city-building genre remains a firm favourite for many gamers. Usually I struggle with games in that genre, with the player feeling oddly distant from the people they’re supposed to be governing. This was non-existent in Go-Go Town! though, as the mayor takes a very hands-on approach instead.

Prideful Sloth has been working on Go-Go Town! for a while now, with the initial early access release over a year ago. Earlier this month they dropped the Tourist Trap update, the fifth big expansion, and when they reached out to me to see if I wanted to take a look, my decision was made rather quickly. To be fair, I had played the demo before the game’s initial release and was hooked already; I just never found the time to dig into the full game until now.

Unlike most city builders, becoming mayor is less of a voluntary step and more of an ‘oh well, I guess that happened situation. The game starts off with you being given a very, very quick recap of what you’re supposed to do, and then you’re just let loose upon your own new town. To start off with, you basically only have some empty plots of land and some areas where you can get resources.

Through an app on your phone, you can unlock packs of buildings. So early on, it’s interesting to build some shops and to earn the town some money. But you’ll need people to operate these shops, so you have to open up the train station so tourists and potential inhabitants can show up. Rather quickly, the whole town comes into motion, and once it does, it never stops.

You see, sleep is very much an optional thing in the world of Go-Go Town! In my experience, I didn’t really find the time for much shut-eye, as there are just always so many things to do. Whether it’s getting more resources, providing my shops with more ingredients or cleaning up after the tourists, there’s just so much to think of. Doing all of these things is important, though, as it will make your rank go up, meaning you’ll get access to even more buildings to expand your now thriving little town.

And these upgrades are absolutely vital. Just when you think you might get completely overwhelmed by everything that you need to do, these provide upgrades which allow you to hire staff for your resource mining stations, meaning they do the work for you. That feeling, when my entire town seemed to click in place with my own farmers, miners, fishermen, and so on, was SO satisfying. It took hard work and dedication to get there, but what a feeling it is to realise you have time to breathe and to see the city function on its own.

It helps, of course, that the game is just so utterly charming to play. The visual style is really nice to look at, with a more cartoony 3D look that will delight players of all ages. Go-Go Town! feels like a game that’s made for everyone to enjoy, with a great sense of humour, some fancy music in the background (where credit is given to each and every artist at the start of every new song, which I think is a great move) and just a fun take on the genre.

I didn’t get the chance to play this in co-op, but I do believe this game would be a lot of fun with a couple of friends. Just making capitalism work while causing mayhem, whether it’s by running over tourists on your skateboard or inviting aliens to stay over. There are also tons of customisation options to unlock, meaning you can make your mayor look exactly like you or like a complete idiot if you’d prefer that.

The question is: can you unlock your town’s true potential? There’s plenty that can be done to win over the tourists who visit your town, whether it’s providing them with entertainment or just the right shops to visit, or maybe even decorating your town to look just the way you want it to. All of it is fun to do, and none of it feels rushed. The only time you have a timer on you to provide some pressure is during set events to level up your town, but even then you can choose which day you want to have the event take place.

I’m really curious to find out where the story is heading to. I mean, it’s pretty clear that the people who have appointed you as mayor haven’t done so out of the goodness of their hearts. They’re in it to make money, as you can deduce from the various agents’s notes you find around town. Is this something that will come back to haunt us? Or is the growth we can achieve pretty much limitless?

I’ll definitely be keeping my eye on further updates on Go-Go Town!, as it has won me over with its charm, but mostly with its addictiveness. Once you start playing, you’ll notice that the ‘just one more go feeling will take over pretty quickly: oh, you just need to pick up the litter over there? But then you notice your restaurant is running out of ingredients. And of course, that’s the exact time when you need to export some of your products. Yeah, the FOMO is real in this game, and it gets under your skin pretty quickly.