If you’re looking for a cute and relaxing city-building game, Go-Go Town! might be worth checking out. At its core, the game is a city-building and management simulator, but instead of simply placing buildings and watching your town grow, you’ll actually be running around gathering resources, crafting tools, unlocking new features, and managing your little Townies.
At the beginning, you’ll spend quite a bit of time foraging for materials such as wood and stone. These resources can then be processed into materials like planks and bricks for construction. Some resources can’t simply be collected by hand either, so you’ll need to craft and use the right tools to break them down. It gives the early game a nice little loop of gather → craft → build → unlock.
Growing Your Town
One of the more interesting parts of Go-Go Town! is how you get new Townies. Rather than simply creating new residents yourself, you’ll need to wait for the train to arrive at your town. Some of the visitors will have certain requirements that you need to fulfil before they can become permanent residents. Once you convince them to stay, these Townies can eventually become workers for your shops and other businesses.
As you explore more of the surrounding area and continue developing your town, you’ll gradually unlock new shops and features. This includes activities like fishing and farming, which also gives you more ways to manage your town. You can even assign your Townies to help with farming, so you don’t have to do everything yourself.
And honestly, one of the cutest parts is collecting all the different Townies. There’s something oddly satisfying about seeing your little town slowly fill up with different characters.
Exploring and Collecting
Exploration also plays an important role in the game. While you’re out gathering resources, there’s a chance you’ll come across various collectible items. These can be brought back to the Town Hall, where you can add them to your collection and earn some extra money along the way.
It’s a small feature, but it gives you another reason to explore rather than simply gathering whatever resources you need for your next building.
Speaking of which, one thing I noticed early on is that earning money can be quite slow in the beginning. Because of that, I found myself thinking twice before spending anything, which is especially painful when all I want to do is decorate my town.
As you unlock more shops and ways to earn money, things do get easier, but the slower start definitely makes you work for those decorations.
Better With a Controller?
I played the game on PC, but while playing, I kept thinking that Go-Go Town! would probably feel even more fun on a console or with a controller.
Since you spend so much time running around town, gathering materials, fishing, farming and interacting with different things, the gameplay feels like it would suit a controller really well. It has that cosy, pick-up-and-play feeling where I can imagine myself lying on the sofa and casually work on my little town for hours.
Final Thoughts
Overall, Go-Go Town! is a cute and charming city-building simulator that mixes town management, exploration, resource gathering and light automation into a pretty approachable package. If you enjoy cute management games, city builders, resource gathering and decorating, Go-Go Town! is definitely a fun one to pick up.
While the slower money progression at the start may prove to be a slight challenge, the town starts to feel much more alive once you unlock more ways to earn resources and money. It’s the kind of game that you’ll pick up for a moment, only to realise you’ve spent hours building your little town.
Plus, if you’re anything like me, you’ll have also spent all your money on decorations.
