Like millions of other people, I was briefly addicted to Animal Crossing: New Horizons in early 2020. Needing to play it for work and having little else to do, I dumped a lot of time into that Nintendo Switch game over the course of a couple of months in spring 2020. After losing a lot of bells in the game’s stalk market and getting frustrated by the slow cadence of updates, I bounced off the game hard and have had trouble returning to my island ever since. Thankfully, there are plenty of games aiming to take a shot at Animal Crossing: New Horizons’ cutesy town-building, life simulation crown. While some people prefer games like Hello Kitty: Island Adventure, I’ve recently been hooked on Go-Go Town.
Released into Steam early access by Prideful Sloth and Cult Games on June 18, Go-Go Town is a charmingly approachable game about building a run-down city back up as its mayor. Although it’s not the most innovative game in the genre, Go-Go Town’s appealing presentation, intuitive gameplay systems, and already-present gameplay loops made it the first game in a while to remind me of why I loved Animal Crossing: New Horizons so much in 2020. With Prideful Sloth already being very transparent about its early access plans, Go-Go Town is shaping up to be something really special.