What if after a hard day of work you want to give your brain a relaxing tickle? A little jolt of stimuli that will be demanding enough to bring you that sense of satisfaction, but never verge over the cursed cliff of frustration? There are cosy games out there up the wazoo, right now. We are living in an age where the whole grand genre of cozy gaming is in ascension, with dozens of titles coming out every year. TOWNFRAME is the newest addition and quite possibly one of the warmest to the mind and soul.
The story of TOWNFRAME is that there isn't one. There are many! You're the new townframer, a person bestowed with a unique talent to bring memories back to life by reshaping tiny landscapes. Your goal is to bring solace to the many people (and other beings!) that require your peculiar talents. Each of them will give you a task which can be quite direct or rather... ephemeral. Each of these tasks is a puzzle to be solved by your own understanding of what they are asking of you. Reading between the lines and connecting mental dots is crucial to your success.
Sounds stressful? Perish the thought! First of all, the whole atmosphere of the game is as soft and tender as it can be. Soothing music aided by gentle sounds sweeps over the game in every corner. Unobtrusive beige reigns supreme, while the little scenes are pastel blues, greens, and yellows, delicate and cutesy. Like stickers attached to a page of a kids' playbook. But while the audiovisual put on a softer mood, it is the puzzles that make the game so relaxing. They are never too demanding. Don't get me wrong - some of them can be a little tricky and need multiple re-reads of the given task for them to click in the brain. But not once did I feel stuck so completely that a little hint here and there didn't see me through.
The best part about the puzzles is their variety, all thanks to a few unlockable tools you'll acquire on your way through the map. Controlling wind gives a new angle to some challenges, making you lock down a certain event in time to uncover the needed part of the puzzle. Sounds listener tool is a crucial component of some conundrums to solve, and a very fun one, with an adjustable scope of what you can listen to at once. The photo tool is a simple one, but some of the people will ask you to take a particular piece of the scene to fill in their task properly. They are not too complex, but they add just enough zest to the gameplay to make each puzzle feel unique. It's all good fun.
If there's any fault I could ascribe to this little game is, well... it's very little. I finished it in one hour and some minutes. It's a single evening kind of game if you want to see it through, but I would say it works best if you do a puzzle or two at a time. A little morsel of puzzle-solving goodness for your brain. That way you can extend its staying power for a good set of evenings, treating it like a candy each day until you run out. For its low price point, I don't think it would be fair to dock any point from it because of its length. It's a cute and clever little puzzler that will, put simply, make you happy.
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