[Waves crash, seagulls scream, and salty air drifts through the winding streets. The town is further gentrified and turned into a resort, with tourists barely able to get around in the height of summer. Fortunately, Swedish developer Oskar Stålberg's "Townscaper" recreates the magic of endless exploration of quaint harbors and seaside villages, one tile at a time.

Townscaper is more a virtual toy than a game. It's like a Lego set for building picturesque cobblestone villages as cozy or expansive as your imagination allows. No complicated traffic, power, or infrastructure management is required. Just left-click to place a tile (a road on the water, a brightly colored house above it) and right-click to remove it. That's really all there is to it.

However, Townscaper has a number of small, welcome innovations that make what might otherwise be just another block-dropping game more engaging. For starters, Townscaper's grid is oddly winding. Buildings organically lead into the winding angles and quirky street layouts that characterize seaside towns (though if you insist, you can create rigid geometric blocks in some parts of the grid).

Tiles also smartly adapt to what is placed around them. Stairs are formed between levels, roofs become streets, and arches are formed where towers intersect each other. Closed streets become gardens, and fences are built based on blocks of houses of different colors. There is no formal unlocking system, but learning what interactions create different kinds of architecture is rewarding in itself.

While you won't see villagers walking around, Townscaper has plenty of tricks to make your world feel lived in. Laundry peeks out between buildings, lights flicker on when the sun is lowered, and flocks of seagulls perch on rooftops in flocks, but you don't have to worry about bird droppings littering the town. Clever use of color can give each neighborhood a unique feel. In my largest town, for example, there are vast, neat marble towers with vine-like walkways stretching over cluttered neighborhoods and gardens.

Townscapers may not have the complexity of Cities: Cities:Skylines, but their quaint towns, dotted with cobblestone streets, old churches, shipyards and lighthouses, are more like "real" city builders' sterile American-style It feels instantly more homey than Metropolis. It's a shame, however, that you can't zoom down to a first-person perspective. Of course, you can clumsily manipulate the camera to get a street-level view, but I'm eagerly awaiting an update that will allow me to explore the boardwalk myself.

With high-resolution screenshot options, a texture toggle, and the ability to move the sun itself, Townscaper is shockingly good as a desktop wallpaper generator. A recent update allows users to export their town as a 3D model for printing, prototyping, and whatever else they want. Yet still, Townscaper is just a toy. It's a very simple little thing, and if you're looking for something that looks like a challenge, you'll probably clock out of it in a few seconds.

But fun in its own way, and allowing you to jump in and build new living quarters when you have a few minutes to spare, Townscaper is an utterly enjoyable little pastime that has kept me busy since I first got Early Access last year. Now that it has been released in earnest, I have no doubt that I'll be back for another little vacation for many months to come.