Greetings, citizens! We present to you our first Dev Diary for Town to City 🏡
This month, get to know the developers, Galaxy Grove, and their journey in more detail.
How (and when) did Galaxy Grove start?
Our founder Joost van Dongen was previously co-founder of Ronimo Games, the studio behind Awesomenauts and Swords & Soldiers. That was great fun, but as a gamer, Joost likes to play management games, not Ronimo’s action-packed multiplayer games. So after 13 years, Joost left Ronimo Games to follow his heart even more and make management games. At the end of 2021 he started working on Station to Station. When funding was secured he was able to start hiring a team and turn his solo project into a real team effort: Galaxy Grove! We’re now a 16 people team, working on Town to City and another unannounced management game.
Galaxy Grove Team
What drew you to the Voxel art style?
We saw some amazing voxel art on Twitter. When thinking of voxel art, most people think of Minecraft’s big cubes, but the art we saw was highly detailed, vibrant with tiny voxels. This looked amazing and we thought it should be possible to bring such detailed voxels to games too. One of the voxel artists that inspired us most was Dima and he even worked for Galaxy Grove for a while!
What made you decide on the direction of a city builder, especially after Station to Station?
We looked at the tiny towns in the Station to Station landscapes and felt like we wanted to build those ourselves. We also wanted to make a deeper game than Station to Station, with a real economy and more management.
Screenshots of Station to Station
Where did the inspiration for the architecture in Town to City draw from?
Do you know that feeling of a summer vacation in France? That’s what we wanted to reproduce! So we took inspiration from the south of France and other Mediterranean counties, especially Italy and Spain. We also wanted to take Station to Station’s paper UI aesthetic to a new place and got inspired by art nouveau posters. To match that in our game world we decided that the fanciest, most high-class buildings in Town to City should be inspired by art nouveau architecture.
Examples of Art Nouvea buildings
How are you finding creating Town to City different from Station to Station?
It’s an interesting experience. On the one hand we can draw on our experience making Station to Station, so we can skip a lot of big research steps. On the other hand, Town to City is a much more complex game, with a real-time economy, more features, more buildings, more UI, more everything! It’s a much bigger game!
Town to City
What has it been like working on Town to City so far?
Really fun! The first prototypes created a fun experience after only a month or two and from there it has been continuously getting better. There’s an interesting challenge in trying to make something that’s more relaxing and easier to understand than most other city builders, while still having a good amount of depth and real management gameplay.
Add Town to City to your Wishlist now! 🏡
https://store.steampowered.com/app/3115220/Town_to_City/
Keep up to date with all things Galaxy Grove in the Discord!
