Townscaper is the latest surprise addition to Xbox Game Pass

Townscaper, a chill and very aesthetically-pleasing city-builder from Oskar Stalberg (whom you may know as the developer behind Bad North) is now available to play on Xbox Game Pass.

Townscaper has long been something of a social media darling; if you mooch about games Twitter like me, you'll have seen it crop up often as other indie devs share little snippets of the towns and villages they've made. Buildings appear with a very satisfying 'pop' and the whole thing is more like a toybox experience than a traditional game. I urge you to give it a go if you've got the time, it's honestly a delight.

"Build quaint island towns with curvy streets, small hamlets, soaring cathedrals, canal networks, or sky cities on stilts. Build the town your dreams, block by block," reads a little blurb for the game. "No goal. No real gameplay. Just plenty of building and plenty of beauty. That's it."

In the game, you can pick colours from the palette, plop down coloured blocks of houses on the irregular grid, and watch Townscaper's underlying algorithm automatically turn those blocks into little houses, arches, stairways, bridges, and lush backyards, depending on where you build.

The game is also suprisingly nice for those of you that like harvesting achievements. You can expect to get the full 1000G from the game in no more than ten minutes, if you're going for completion intentionally.

Check the game out on the Microsoft Store here.

It's been a very strong showing for Xbox Game Pass over the past few days; as well as the big monthly update that announced Among Us, Final Fantasy 13-2, Stardew Valley, and more coming to the subscription service over the next few weeks, we also got confirmation that Aliens: Fireteam Elite will be joining the service ahead of its big Season 2 update, and Generation Zero landed out of nowhere, too. Good luck to anyone with an already sizeable backlog.

ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7t7ORbW5nm5%2BifLW71qeqnJmgmr9uxMGor2afkaKybrzArKpmppWseqKww6Kroqee