Town Star

Gameplay Guide

“Hello, I’d like to be the new headman of this town.”

I don't know why, but farming simulation games have always intrigued me. My love for farming simulation games, which started with playing Farmville, of course, still continues today. Probably because of the base-building aspects and peaceful gameplay that these games offer, who knows?

Today, we’ll be diving into the world of Town Star. Get ready to be covered in mud, feathers, and animal feces, ladies and gentlemen!

Town Star is a free-to-play farming/building simulation game from Gala Games, which is owned by one of the co-founders of Zynga. If you don’t know, Zynga is the parent company of Farmville. With that in mind, let’s dive into the new generation of Farmville-like blockchain farming simulation game!

First of all, to play the Town Star you need a Gala Games account. It’s very easy to create one, just go to the official website of Gala Games and set up your account. I am waiting for you to set up your account in real-time.

Are you done? All good? Great! Now let’s move on to the next step; click the “GAMES” tab on top of the website and find Town Star there, it should be on the right at the top of the games’ list. While you’re logged in, simply click on the blue “PLAY” button and it’s done! Now you’re on the game’s menu, great job headman candidate!

From the menu, you can select your server by clicking the “CHANGE” button. I suggest you choose the least populated one. Don’t worry, I’ll explain the reason just in a minute.

Always try to choose the least populated server. Always.

I was playing on #4 previously, that’s why I have the “RETURN” button on it. For this gameplay session, I picked #3 because it is the least populated server. Even three more players can make a big difference!

Welcome to the 8bit world of Town Star!

When you select your server, you’ll be greeted by the game’s world map. I said the least populated server is better, remember that? That’s because you’ll be choosing your spot on the world map to build your town! It’s not automated; you won’t be assigned a handful of land to build your town. No, sir! You have to decide your town’s location, and there are a few things that you have to keep in your mind while choosing a spot on the map: how close you are to the nearest city, what is your way of transportation to that city (can be land transportation or marine transportation), and the type of geographical terrain. Of course, other players would want to pick the best spots on the world map, so if fewer players are on a server, your chances of picking the best spot for yourself will automatically increase.

I tried to pick a spot around Barcelona. No luck.

Then, I tried to pick a spot around where I’m from. And guess what? I found one! It is very close to Istanbul, and it is plain. This means I don’t have to worry about finding wood. Imagine picking a desert spot for an agricultural town. :’)

After deciding on the placement of your town, click “YES.” Next, pick a good name for your beloved town. I advise you to keep it mannerly, but the choice is yours of course. 

I decided to be polite — this time.

It is snowy because it’s the winter season. Typically, it is entirely green, covered with grass.

Now you’re officially the headman of your town! Congratulations! It’s time to make some money by building and upgrading your very own town. The main purpose of your town is to produce goods and sell these goods to the cities. Each time you sell a batch of products to cities, you’ll earn money and stars. Stars will help you complete daily challenges and earn TownCoin, the official token of Town Star. Money, however, is the main resource for any kind of in-game activity such as construction, upgrading, removing obstacles on your town’s map, etc. You can increase the amount of money, TownCoin, and stars you earn with the help of unique and powerful NFTs by simply placing them in your town. However, to place NFT assets in your town, you need to increase your Gala Power.

“By the power of Gala Games, I have the Gala Power!”

Before diving into the detailed gameplay mechanics of Town Star, you need to understand the Gala Power. In the game, every player has a special level called Gala Power. This power is determined by the amounts of GALA and TownCoin held in your wallet. For each level of Gala Power, you can place more NFTs in your town. Placing NFTs into your town will hugely increase your TownCoin earnings, and that means you will make more real profit out of the game at the end of the day. To sum up, if you increase your Gala Power, you can place more NFTs in your town, allowing you to earn more real income out of the game. 

My Gala Power is a big fat zero at the moment. That’s why I can’t place any NFTs in my town, thus, I won’t earn any TownCoin even if I complete the daily challenge.

“As the headman of this town, I choose to not work.”

Well, you’re lucky because your townsfolk are eager to work for you! Though, you need to give them a house and pay some money. Otherwise, that would not be very appropriate.

In the game, every worker has a certain job. A farmer won’t go to a tree and chop it down, or a rancher won’t harvest the wheat out of the farm. You need to manage your town according to your product type and the corresponding worker to that product type. When you first start the game, Town Star will automatically give you a builder, a builder’s house, a farmer, and a farmer's house. From that point, you need to build the houses of workers to summon them. Every worker knows what to do; you don’t have to click and send them to do their jobs. However, you must create a work environment for them to come out of their homes and do their jobs beforehand. On a side note, all worker houses should be placed by the road. 

Just a friendly reminder, more workers in your town means more wages that you have to pay. So, expand your operations wisely. If you won’t be able to pay them their wages, they will simply stop working.

“I like my money how I like my peppermint field; green.”

Okay, now let’s get down to business and talk about the money. At the beginning of the game, every player gets the same standard setup regardless of their town’s location. You will be greeted by the following items when you start the game like everyone else:

- A farmhouse (and a farmer)

- Silo

- Wheat fields x2

- A well

- A woodshed (full of wood)

- Some basic roads

- A builder house (and a builde)

- Fuel depot

- Trade depot (can be a boat or a truck, depending on your location

- $25.000 cash

With these items, you can now start producing wheat and selling them to the nearest cities. To do that, you need to collect 10 wheat and sell them to cities via your trade depot. When you have 10 wheat, simply click on your trade depot. You will see your tradable product stocks, the list of cities, your income, delivery time, and the amount of gasoline for your delivery. Hopefully, you’ve managed to build your town somewhere near a city. If that’s the case, your gasoline consumption will dramatically decrease. That’s why always pick a spot for your town on the map close to a city. Oh, let me remind you this again, by the way:

Pick the least populated server for the best spot on the world map.

Just one gallon of gasoline per delivery for Istanbul. Niiiiice.

“Mudbugs, sunburn, dehydration … farm hard or cry hard.”

You start with farming at the beginning of the game, and step by step, you improve the production capacity of your town by adding ranches, more farmable fields, workers, industrial structures, etc. However, this doesn’t mean farming will eventually stop. To craft top-tier goods, you need materials, and farming gives you these resources. I mean, you can’t make a cake without some wheat. 

Fields produce a certain type of crop. You can buy the farming field according to your needs by simply clicking on an available plot of land. When you do that, you will see two buttons on the right corner of your screen. The bottom one is the in-game marketplace button. From there, you can buy your desired farming field, worker houses, buildings, basically any available thing that you want in your town. The box-shaped button, however, will take you to your Gala Inventory for you to see your NFT collection. If you have any NFTs in your inventory and enough Gala Power, you can place these NFTs in your town to increase your general income. 

By the way, you can buy a range of different NFTs from both Gala Games Store and OpenSea such as workers, animals, storage, skins, coils, production centers, etc. You can buy NFTs from Gala Games Store by burning GALA, ETH, TownCoin, or BAT while you can do your transactions with ETH, and GALA on OpenSea. The prices of items can be very different according to their statistics. Do not forget to make your purchases with your budget in mind though, because it can be very tempting to buy many things beyond your budget and upgrade your GALA Power.

Each crop field needs a certain amount of water, and delivering water to crop fields is the farmers’ job. Farmers will visit the well, grab a bucket of water, and pour it on the crops automatically. However, if you place your crop fields strategically, you can manage to decrease the amount of water that needs to be carried by your farmers. To do that, place your crop fields near ponds. According to their distance to a pond, crop fields’ water needs will change. For example, if you place a wheat field right next to a pond, this will automatically fill its water need by ⅔. This means your farmer only has to make one water delivery run. 

This marked crop field is filled with two buckets of water because it’s right next to a pond. The one on its left, however, has only one bucket of water because of its distance to the pond.

Once a crop field’s received its water, that field begins a countdown to its crop production. When the countdown ends, your farmer harvests the crop and carries it to your silo to be used as raw material or to be sold via your trade depot. 

The same mechanic goes for anything in the game, really: you need to deliver the raw materials to your production center (this could be a crop field, a chicken coop, a refinery, etc.) with the help of your workers and wait for its cooldown to finish. Once it’s finished, again, your workers will carry the end product to a storage or a silo. 

“Which came first: chickens or eggs?”

Without a rancher, you can’t produce chickens or eggs. So, the rancher came first. DUH!

Jokes aside, farm animals are just important as farming in Town Star. There are three types of livestock that you can produce and sustain your raw material needs for high-tier goods. They are chicken, sheep, and cattle. 

Chickens are the easiest level of livestock production you can obtain in the game. They produce eggs, obviously, and they live in a chicken coop. To produce eggs, they need water and to be fed regularly, just like crop fields.

Sheep are more like mid-level livestock in the game. They live and produce wool in a sheep pen. A sheep pen is more expensive, needs more water and food than a chicken coop, but they make you earn more profit out of them. You can use their wool to produce high-tier level goods to sell. 

Cattle are the most expensive and the most profitable livestock in the game. They produce milk and live in a milk barn. To be honest, they consume tons of food and water, but the products that you can produce out of their milk are worth the effort and money. 

This is what it will look like when your livestock operations go smoothly.

For your livestock, you need ranchers. Just like any workers in the game, they will work for you if you pay their wages. 

“I need a revolution. An industrial revolution…”

Everything is perfect in your town: you produce tons of products, your storages are full of goods, and your silos are packed with crops that your farmers have harvested. But wait, you don’t have any gasoline in your fuel storage. You can’t sell anything because your trade depot is useless due to the gasoline crisis. You have cities to supply, they count on you, but you can’t deliver your goods to them. Well, it’s the end of the game; you can stop playing now.

It’s not that easy to make you quit, I know. I was just fooling around.

As you can understand from my exaggeration above, gasoline production is critical. You start the game with fuel storage full of gasoline (40 gallons, to be exact), but it won’t last forever. You need to produce gasoline to keep selling your products to cities. To produce gasoline, you need:

1. Refinery (comes with a chemical engineer)
2. Energy (6 per unit)
3. Water drums (2 per unit)
4. Petroleum (1 per unit)

It’s a long and expensive list. So, don’t spend your money recklessly, and start your gasoline operation as soon as possible to sustain your town. Without gasoline, you won’t be able to make any money. None.

Producing fuel is a peaceful process in Town Star. I wish I could say the same for the real world.

Picking the location of industrial facilities is very important because of wind blockage and air pollution. You should put a distance between your industrial area and production area. Air pollution and wind blockage will negatively affect your crop fields and windmills if you don’t put a distance between them. To avoid any harm to your town, I advise you to plan your town structure early in the game and plan ahead. Relocating your structures is very expensive, and it may cause you to bankrupt. Trust me on this, I went bankrupt a few times and had to start all over again with better town planning. :’)

“What was your town like during your administration?”

At first, not very good to be honest. I had to start over about four times because of my poor choices. I’ve failed on strategic planning most of the time. In my first town, I had problems with placing crop farms around the ponds. In general, I couldn’t make enough sales to counter my expenses on my first try.

On my second try, however, I’ve successfully managed to place my crop fields, everything was going very well until I decided to spend my money on buying unnecessary buildings. I focused on buying workers to increase my production capabilities, but in the end, I couldn’t manage to pay their wages. I learned a lesson of being less greedy on my second try.

My third try was an epic fail. I misclicked on a plot of land and unwillingly removed an obstacle that I didn’t have to remove. It cost me thousands of dollars, so I rage quit. What a great headman I am.

On my last try, I did great. I successfully planned everything before I act, made a good amount of profit at the beginning of the game. Then, I quickly figured out where to put my industrial buildings, and started to produce gasoline to support my production-sales ratio. Because my planning was solid, I gradually increased my town’s production capabilities and added new product lines to my production chain. At the end of my six hours of gameplay session with my fourth town, I was overproducing products and had to buy a lot of silos and storage. My trade-depot couldn’t match my production speed. Poor guy.

Without placing any NFTs in my town, I made +-300.000$(in-game) in six hours and spent most of it upgrading my town for better income. Also, because I don’t own any NFT assets to place in my town, I couldn’t farm any TownCoin. To farm TownCoin, NFTs are indispensable.