A long time ago there was this dude named Sir Reginald Sharkingston and he was an adventurer or discoverer or something. He would explore reefs and stuff and went into this cave and found a material later known as Sharknite. This Sharknite stuff allowed us to build all sorts of cool stuff including airships and mechanical legs. Once we, as sharks, had that stuff we were unstoppable. Being able to fly around and walk on land trivialized us being locked in the sea. All that’s left in front of us are seeking out other towns and becoming traveling merchants. Sorry, I forgot I was playing this cool game demo available during Steam NextFest called Townseek.
Townseek is an exploration and trading simulator created by Whales and Games. In it, you play a shark airship explorer apprentice to Captain Jawline, who gives you your airship and sends you off on an adventure. Initially providing quests to have me explore the islands surrounding the shark’s home, Sharkdwell, I was treated to a fun and adorable set of landmarks and new towns. Along the way, I’d meet cats, rabbits, slimes, and humans. Each of these creatures had its towns, markets, quests to give, and a reputation system. One of the towns even used a different currency, providing an extra level of depth to the trading system.
Being a merchant is fun but simple. The price of an item is either green, meaning that the item is selling for less than the average value, or red, indicating it is selling for more than the average value. When the item is in your inventory and looking to be sold, the indicators are the opposite. Eventually, I’d be given access to a suite of tools to add to my already customizable airship. First, I was given a fishing rod to fish. Eventually, I’d acquire, through either questing or purchasing directly, a mining pick for mining and a hoe for farming. Only being the demo, I could see that there were many other tools to acquire once I played the full game. These tools gave me a lot to do on the overworld map and gave me extra items to sell when visiting towns.
Completing parts of the main quest gave me a compass, allowing me to traverse areas that had previously been inaccessible. Captain Jawline informed me that the compass wouldn’t allow me to traverse inclement weather but I would need to figure that out on my own. More importantly, the Townseek demo gives you a lot of information about the demo and even some to let you know what you’ll be doing come release. Each town visited had a reputation ranking level and important quests, both when hitting milestones resulted in a discussion with the leader. Townseek doesn’t take itself too seriously, so the conversations were mostly lighthearted with the occasional pun.
I easily fell into a groove with Townseek. Resource nodes surround landmarks and when gathering resources from them, you’ll get a pop-up at the bottom of the screen showing you which resources you’ve gathered and which ones you’re missing. Impressively, each landmark had its own set of resources to gather. Though there were only 3 fishing spots in the demo, each one had different fish in them. It’s fun to think of how diverse your items will be in a game like this, just navigating this fun little world and seeing all it has to offer when the full game releases sometime in 2023. Make sure to check out the demo during Steam NextFest and wishlist the game if you enjoy it.
