With a name like TownCraft, you might expect this crafting and village building game to be completely unoriginal shovelware made by a couple of unscrupulous developers who have no problem ripping off someone else’s hard work. But TownCraft is neither a Minecraft clone nor a riff on Animal Crossing. Instead, it takes elements of both and other games — games that help inspire Minecraft and Animal Crossing — to make an interesting hybrid.
With TownCraft, now available on iPhones and Macs — and, apparently, coming to PCs at some point — after already been available on iPad, I spoke to lead designer Leigh Harris and his brother, lead programmer Rohan Harris, of Flat Earth Games about how TownCraft came to be, how it came to be on iPhones and Macs, and why they couldn’t come up with a better name.