Debugger

Debugger is a former publication from Medium about consumer technology and gadgets. Currently…

Member-only story

Creating Dataviz Using the Video Game ‘Townscaper’

Clive Thompson
Debugger
Published in
7 min readFeb 14, 2022

--

These Townscaper buildings? They chart the monthly price of Bitcoin over the last five years

(Want to try my tool that turns data into a Townscaper town? It’s here!)

I’m a big fan of Townscaper, the gorgeous little indie video game.

I’m not quite sure it’s a “game,” mind you. There’s no way to win or lose. All you do is create Mediterranean-looking villas against a watery backdrop — calmly placing building by building into place, each time producing a “plink” noise that palpably renews the soul.

So it’s more like a creative toy, or a piece of extremely odd architectural software. There are moments of surprise and delight, as when a building attaches at an unexpected angle, or a flock of birds appears on a roof. But mostly it’s just a dreamy zone-out experience — architecture as meditation.

A few days ago, I was placing houses in a long row, with varying heights. And when I looked at the jagged result, I thought:

Hey, that looks like a bar chart!

That made me wonder, hmmm, could I use Townscaper as a dataviz tool? Could I write code that takes data and turns it into a row of buildings?

--

--

Debugger
Debugger

Published in Debugger

Debugger is a former publication from Medium about consumer technology and gadgets. Currently inactive and not taking submissions.

Clive Thompson
Clive Thompson

Written by Clive Thompson

I write 2X a week on tech, science, culture — and how those collide. Writer at NYT mag/Wired; author, “Coders”. @clive@saturation.social clive@clivethompson.net

No responses yet