After busting down the castle door with their chaotic, siege-based citybuilder Diplomacy Is Not An Option last year, the last thing I expected to see next from developers Door 407 was a chill, meditative puzzle game that's just about, well, building tiny cities. In Urbo there are no sky lasers, no oncoming hordes. Nothing. Just dinky little grid-based maps, and an endless stream of tiny adorable buildings to plonk down on them in the pursuit of sweet, sweet point scores.
This being a puzzle game, the aim here is to place three buildings of the same type altogether, either in a line or right-angled cluster, at which point they'll all shzooge together to level up to the next building type. This is where the Threes comparison comes in, though you can zhuzh more than three of the same building together if you're smart to earn more points. But it's not quite as simple as that. You see, your buildings will only shoump onto the tile you placed down last, and careful city planners will likely want to think about placing their buildings in reverse so they end up with their fancy new house in the place they actually want it, not in an awkward middle spot that cuts off two precious tiles from play, or awkwardly sits in the middle of another chain of dwellings accidentally. And yep, that's where the Dorfromantik connection comes in, and I really do like it very, very much.