What I think this game really needs is more to do with a village after you make it.

[Crawley]

I strongly believe that Tiny Glades needs to make up it's mind on if it's going to be a "game" or a "tool."

From the FAQ:

Originally posted by anopara:

❔ What were your inspirations?
Townscaper is our main inspiration! We were also influenced by the chill vibes of Dorfromantik and Unpacking.

I don't have any experience with Unpacking, but I do with both Dorfromantik and Townscaper, so I'm going to talk about those two.

First let's define the two:
Dorfromantik is a game. It has rules, it has a scoring system, it has quests and missions while you play, and it has unlocks and different modes, it has strategy, etc., etc. It's not a very complex game, but it's 100% a game.
Townscaper isn't really a game, as in there are no scores, no quests, no goals, no unlocks or upgrades, and no strategies. At best it's a sandbox, but not a very deep one gameplay-wise. It has a lot of tools in it to make it function, but it's not really a tool either because other than taking a screenshot, there's nothing you can do with your finished product. In essence, it's kinda missing both the things that would make it a game and the things that make it a tool, so it finds itself somewhere between a game and a tool.

Next, let's compare the two:
Dorfromantik is #1290 in top-selling all time; Townscaper is #1298 in top-selling all time, only 8 places lower.
Dorfromantik has 96.6% positive reviews; Townscaper has 95.8% positive reviews.
Dorfromantik has 25,145 positive reviews; Townscaper has 19,447 positive reviews.
Dorfromantik sold an estimated 780,000-1,200,000 copies; Townscaper sold an estimated 610,000-1,100,000 copies.
They are both chill, cozy games, low/no pressure, easy to pick up and play, and have very similar sales and reviews. Overall, they look very similar.

Finally, let's contrast the two:
Dorfromantik has averaged about 600-800 concurrent players over the past year. Townscaper has averaged about 100 concurrent players over the past year.
Dorfromantik has an all-time peak of over 7,000 players. Townscaper has an all-time peak of peak of just over 1,000 players.
There are over 550 people playing Dorfromantik right now (as of writing this) and fewer than 100 people playing Townscaper (as of writing this).
Dorfromantik has averaged about 300-400 weekly Twitch viewers over the past year, and Townscaper has averaged about 30-60 weekly Twitch viewers over the past year.

(All data above gathered from steamdb.info)

As you can see, here are two chill, cozy games that both sold similarly very well, both with very high reviews, and both with a similar number of reviews. And yet Dorfromantik absolutely crushes Townscaper in terms of longevity, staying power, relevance, player count, online viewers, etc.
This also does align with my personal feelings on both of these games as well, in that Dorfromantik is fun to pick up and play over and over, while Townscaper is a novelty: fun to mess around with for a while but ultimately has no focus and little long-term replayability. But I'm not saying Dorfromantik is good because it's a game and Townscaper is bad because it's not; I'm saying Dorfromantik knows what it is and leans into it while Townscaper doesn't have a strong identity and doesn't lean into anything. It's a one-trick pony and no matter how good that trick is, once you've seen it, you've seen everything it has to offer.

To bring this all back to Tiny Glades, I definitely do not think that Tiny Glades has to be more "gamey" to succeed; I don't think it needs fights or raids or an economy or farming or settlement management if that's not what the devs want to do. But I do think it needs to be more than a screenshot maker, and it needs to be more than an empty sandbox, and it needs to be more than a tech demo for fancy splines. And if it's not going to be a traditional game, then I strongly suggest leaning into making it more of a tool.

What that looks like in the end is really up to the devs, but there are many small things that could be added to give the game more functionality beyond just making a village and taking a screenshot. I think personally my biggest desire for this game is that Tabletop RPG players (DMs and GMs specifically) are always looking for ways to more easily create interesting and pretty locations for exploration, and combat, and visiting towns and cities, and the ability to export high-resolution top-down images of our creations with square and/or hex overlays to use in tabletop games would immediately elevate this game above similar games.

[cube]

Originally posted by Crawley:

it needs to be more than a screenshot maker, and it needs to be more than an empty sandbox, and it needs to be more than a tech demo for fancy splines.

It only needs to be what the developers want to make. If it's not what you want to play, don't play it.

[omayli]

I'm happy that there is a game for me - Tiny Glade, creative, calm, beautiful. I create my own architectural fantasies, my own cozy worlds, like in Lego. I create what I want and I feel creative freedom. There are many people like me, we need games without wars and blood.
I don't like battles, action scenes, set scenarios.

[Scortrine]

Originally posted by blank:

Originally posted by Crawley:

it needs to be more than a screenshot maker, and it needs to be more than an empty sandbox, and it needs to be more than a tech demo for fancy splines.

It only needs to be what the developers want to make. If it's not what you want to play, don't play it.

i know what this game really needs. it NEEDS to be released soon ! i need it to be

[kellemann]

The demo was perfect, and when they ad water, stairs and other small updates this will be my GOTY.

[GirlGreyTea]

Tiny Glade may not fit the box that YOU define as a game. But it's a very cozy game nonetheless. It's purely for enjoyment, creativity, relaxation, an escape...etc. You get it? It isn't trying to be anything other than the whimsical fantasy land builder that it is. Not every thing you pick up to play needs to give you a dopamine rush to keep you coming back.

I don't always want a game that has tons of achievements and I'm sure there are others out there that feel the same. Tasks to complete or things I have to unlock by doing some obscure thing in the game that I'll inevitably have to stop and look up a thousand times can get overwhelming. My youngest doesn't want or need a game that has a bunch of confusing controls while they figure out how to use a mouse/keyboard in ways that schools aren't designed to teach them. They just need a simple click and learn how to flow setting that allows them to organically figure stuff out. This game gets it perfectly and can be great for all ages to interact with.

Tiny Glad could inspire an entire webtoon drawn based on a screenshot of a castle in the middle of a forest clearing. It shows various angles/perspectives and allows someone who otherwise struggles with both perspective and placement the ability to create something on paper. I mean the possibilities there are endless, really.

So this game could serve the purpose as both a game AND a tool. It's wonderful as is. It's designed well for the people it's intended for and we can't wait to see what the final result will be.

[Jeo Nugu]

Umm... no.

[Private117]

You said so many things in 7 Paragraphs without actually saying anything.

it took you 5 paragraphs to go from "the game needs to have xyz" to "I definitely do not think that Tiny Glades has to be more "gamey" to succeed" and then back to " But I do think it needs to be more"
Obviously that is your opinion and thats fine. But your opinion dosnt even know what it wants to be.

If you dont like the direction the game goes. dont play it.
its a cozy game for some nice chill sessions. there is nothing more to it. Nor does it need to be anything else.
The Game knows perfectly fine what it want to be. Its a sandbox tool to create cozy cottages, castles and small villages. And it makes that quite obvious in its store page describtion of what it is.
No need to compair it to anything else or compair player numbers and sold copys and whatever.
Dorfromantik is a cozy puzzle game. Townscaper is a very simplsitic town builder. Just no comparison needed, they are completely different on what audience they appel to. And what tools and Gameplay elements they implement.

Tiny Glade is what it is and its perfectly fine that way. It has its own audience. And it only needs what the devs envision it to be. And it already outgrew this. Not that it became different, but in scope and scale.

[MrCoco59]

This post likely did not originate from bad intentions, however I feel like it severely misinterprets the developers' creative direction. The game as it was presented in the demo was unfinished, but was already allowing much, much more creative possibilities, and had way more personality than Townscaper ever had, in my opinion.

Townscaper allows to make big, but lifeless and repetitive dioramas ; it is very hard to make unique towns when locked to building blocks on a grid you have no control over, where the only two choices of tile state are "building" or "no building," and every single interaction of a block with its neighbors is entirely predictable. While Tiny Glade also uses procedural generation, the fact that it uses it along with organic freehand placement, item clipping, and has way more diverse and precise detailing options makes me think that it corrected the failed balance of Townscaper by adding just the right amount of randomness and possibilities of fiddling around the rules.

As for Dorfromantik, I find it rather off-topic to compare it to Tiny Glade or Townscaper for anything other than their visual/aesthetic direction. As you said, Dorfromantik is much more of a game in the traditional sense, with objectives and rules. But when executed well, sandbox games can do just fine without such gamification elements, as long as the creative canvas they feature allows for enough creative possibilities. And boy have I already seen so many unique building tricks, speed builds and inspiration posts with just the demo's features!

If this post originated from worry that the game will find no audience, I think you can rest assured that the developers have delivered exactly what most of its community was hoping for so far, so it's fine to trust their direction for now.

As one last note, I do totally see the kind of RPG map creation uses this could have, and on one side this would probably not be that hard to implement so perhaps that's not too much to ask for, but on the other, you also could probably easily and swiftly make such grid towns by drawing walls in the pattern of your choice, build your stuff inside of it while progressively deleting those walls, take a top-down screenshot when finished, and add your own grid pattern on top with an image editing program.

[Gaeniel]

Originally posted by blank:

Originally posted by Crawley:

it needs to be more than a screenshot maker, and it needs to be more than an empty sandbox, and it needs to be more than a tech demo for fancy splines.

It only needs to be what the developers want to make. If it's not what you want to play, don't play it.

Originally posted by Private117:

You said so many things in 7 Paragraphs without actually saying anything.

it took you 5 paragraphs to go from "the game needs to have xyz" to "I definitely do not think that Tiny Glades has to be more "gamey" to succeed" and then back to " But I do think it needs to be more"
Obviously that is your opinion and thats fine. But your opinion dosnt even know what it wants to be.

(...)

If you dont like the direction the game goes. dont play it.

I won't bother the quote the others, but these kinds of replies always remind me of the lonely, friendless, bitter people who always come to say "the game don't need it, if you're not happy, don't play it" or "play something else, the game is good as it is" when someone asks for multiplayer or stuff in some games.

If you don't need anything more, that's fine, but would it really bother you if the game had more tricks up its sleeve ? In the end, it's up to the devs to do something with it or not. They have already made slight changes compared to what the game was initially supposed to be.

[Private117]

Originally posted by Gaeniel:

lonely, friendless, bitter people

and here you are calling people things without knowing them. nobody said anything negative about OP and is just stating their opinions. He has a valid opinion as anyone else. disagreement =/= hateful or negative.
And yet you feel the need to be toxic to others. Why? Why is that encessary? just be nice. quite ironic tbh

[akaplan1]

I'm on the fence about a purchase for the reasons OP raises. I may not feel motivated to play this much more than a couple hours unless there is some sort of progression or "rules." And that is entirely my own opinion -- I'm not saying the devs need to modify their own creative direction for me or players like me. I know there is a very large audience for creative sandboxes and they can be very fun and successful. I'm definitely curious about everything this game has in store.

[404_Not_Found]

I quite liked the demo but I will admit that Townscaper lost me because it didn't really have anything besides its self-contained sandbox.

I think sandboxes are nice, but I definitely wish Townscaper had some utility to it, or at least, more interactivity. Being able to walk around my towns and having more in the way of "path designing" would've done wonders for it. Being able to go inside some buildings, even if their interiors are not things you can edit at all or do much to. There is a kind of enjoyment in just building something that is meant to be traversed, even if the traversal itself does not aid in fulfilling arbitrary goals. As a kid, I once made a long, continuous rail in Tony Hawk's Underground 2 that was just meant to be a thing you could grind on for five straight minutes without being too much at risk of falling off. This achieved... nothing, except the satisfaction of setting a goal for myself and completing that goal.

I ran out of goals to set myself in Townscaper really quickly and it would have helped a lot if I could control something in the world that had collision with the buildings, like one of the gulls, a boat, a pedestrian, etc.

Even if we cannot enter buildings, being able to just walk around in our gardens and our ruins would actually do a lot, I think, without fundamentally changing the game. It adds a lot more depth when your creations have to suddenly interact with a moving entity because now building considerations can be made beyond just aesthetics without taking away from the people who just want to build aesthetically since there's no goal attached to this other than what we create on our own.

This is just my 2 cents onto the thread. I recognize and appreciate OP's thoughtful effort. I do not agree with OP on a few points, but I figured their respectful critique was worth a respectful and constructive contribution.

[Private117]

Originally posted by 404_Not_Found:

...being able to just walk around in our gardens and our ruins would actually do a lot, I think, without fundamentally changing the game....

You can already do this ^^
In the photo mode you had/have the option to go first person camera and just walk around.

[akuweal]

Originally posted by Gaeniel:

I won't bother the quote the others, but these kinds of replies always remind me of the lonely, friendless, bitter people who always come to say "the game don't need it, if you're not happy, don't play it" or "play something else, the game is good as it is" when someone asks for multiplayer or stuff in some games.

If you don't need anything more, that's fine, but would it really bother you if the game had more tricks up its sleeve ? In the end, it's up to the devs to do something with it or not. They have already made slight changes compared to what the game was initially supposed to be.

This is just my opinion, but I don't think games or gamers benefit from the constant hype-chasing. Not every game needs to be constantly morphing, continually adding features and content in a vain attempt to be everything to everyone until it's a bloated mess. Sometimes developers actually have a creative vision that they're striving for that doesn't include multiplayer, or updates every three months until the end of time, or whatever people are asking for.

Early on I saw a few people in this forum declare that this game was dead on arrival if it was anything like Townscaper (its primary inspiration), or didn't include whatever expansive set of features they wanted that would turn it into a completely different game. Just today I saw someone declare a free game "dead" because it didn't have DLC yet.

It's nice sometimes to just let things be what they are, what they were intended to be by the people who made them, and appreciate them on that basis, even if they have shortcomings in your view.

[Yaguex]

I believe the original poster has a point. I am not sure that the key question is whether Tiny Glade must decide to evolve as a "game" or as a "tool", but I definitely agree with his underlying concern: longevity is something to consider as a player.

I have loved the demo very much, and I have had tons of fun spending my Sunday morning creating a castle and a small village. As a sandbox, the game does what it intends to do wonderfully! Well done, devs, you have created a tiny little jewel!

However, once the castle or the village were created to my liking and a bunch of screenshots were taken... the only option forward was to wipe the slate clean and to start off yet another castle or village. One must wonder... how many variations of a castle/village will I want to create? After I have -joyfully- created 4 or 5 different castles, will I give go for my 6th?

As a sandbox without a clearly defined game mechanics, for the player to keep returning over and over, the game has to offer a great variety of options so the type of creations are not limited to just castles and rural towns. Perhaps farms? perhaps a finish village? perhaps a train station? perhaps a lunar base? Here is where the devs have the opportunity to continue developing the game with paid DLCs to keep the game growing and the player base returning for more creations. As it stands, and as wonderful as Tiny Glade is for what it is, longevity is indeed a concern.