PAX Aus 2023 Highlight – Go-Go Town!

Amongst the amazing games on display at PAX Australia 2023 was the very adorable and cosy building life sim Go-Go Town! I was lucky enough to spend some time playing the demo that the Brisbane developers, Prideful Sloth, presented in the PAX Rising area of the showroom floor. This is the team you may know from past titles such as Yonder: The Cloud Catcher Chronicles. The main premise of the game is that you are the newly appointed mayor of Go-Go Town, a rundown area that has seen better days. Your job is to build the town up by constructing exciting stores that people from far and wide will want to travel to Go-Go Town to experience!

The demo starts with a tutorial, where the “elders” of the town will advise you on how to create, manage and expand on the businesses that you will be building. The first thing I noticed whilst playing the demo is how damn cute everything and everyone is in this game. When your character is running, they emit dust from their feet and have a cute side to side movement as their little legs and arms are pumping. Everything in the game is charming; even the chainsaw I was tasked to use to obtain wooden planks was cute! Never thought I’d say that about a chainsaw.

I loved also how there were so many types of stores that you could build in your town. After you have built the bones of your structure, the game will give you an option as to what you want to sell in your store. I chose to sell Gonuts (the world’s version of the donut) and was chuffed to find that to attain said Gonuts all I had to do was find them on a Gonut bush! If only real donuts grew on trees…

Another aspect of the demo I loved was that it lets the player decide what they spend their time doing. If you want to build and expand on the town’s economy, awesome! If you want to drive a bike around the tiny Go-Go Town streets, great! If you want to play arcade games, also awesome and great! There is a “Stuff To Do” textbox on the screen that outlines your current objectives and includes various tasks such as hire staff, use a leaf blower, high-five a cow, and also – whatever you want!

Overall, Go-Go Town! is a super endearing, fun game that will be a must-play for fans of cosy building sims. Go-Go Town! does not have a release date yet but you can currently wishlist it on Steam and sign up for development updates via the game’s website.