URBO
A prologue to URBO
the GameURBO offers you the opportunity to build towns on countless floating islands. Become a visionary architect and watch small houses grow into bigger ones, then bigger ones into even more, slowly filling the untouched soil of your town. When you run out of space on one island, a new one will appear, followed by another, and so on until you complete the level.
IMMERSION AWAITS
Dive into the inimitable ambience of URBO, where landscapes delight the eye and puzzles evoke memories of mathematically precise riddles from ancient legends. You shall create cities that can only be seen in dreams. Dreams to be remembered and to which you’d wish to return. URBO is a unique mixture of visual minimalism, relaxing music, smooth animations, meditative game tempo, and puzzles that impress with their elegant solutions.
VARIETY AWAITS
URBO invites you to visit myriad worlds and secret places. Futuristic cities floating in the abyss of open space. The capital, hidden in an impregnable canyon in the heart of the desert territory. The peaceful quarters of a small fishing village nestled on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea. Or fantastical islands with mythical artifacts in the middle of the vast ocean. URBO is where dreams of distant places come true. You shall see many worlds, existing ones, lost ones, and these that are yet to be found. The choice is yours.
ENIGMAS AWAIT
URBO gives you hours of pleasant moments of contemplation. Under the disguise of simplicity lie challenges that require concentration. The challenges that generously reward an attentive player. URBO is designed so that its nature is clear at first glance. But it will take time and experience, creative decisions and strategic skills to learn how to solve problems and pick the keys to all the puzzles.
AN ENDLESS PATH AWAITS
There’s no ultimate goal in URBO. The rules are very simple: build houses on playing fields of different geometric shapes. From small buildings come bigger ones, with more inhabitants, then even bigger ones, and so on. Thus grows your city and the population. Once you have no free space, the territory expands. Maybe one day you can build a city that can’t expand anymore. But even then there is always a new playing field of a different form, requiring a fresh approach.
URBO AWAITS YOU ANYTIME
Take your mind off work for a quarter of an hour or spend an entire evening playing the game. Run it while waiting for guests or during a break from your favorite activities. Take a moment to pause if you’re feeling stressed – no danger awaits you in the world of URBO, no hostile animals or plundering bandits, no enemies or ghosts. Shift your attention when you realize you can’t solve an important problem. Who knows, maybe it’s URBO that holds the key to it.
DISCORD AWAITS YOU
Join the game’s Discord to become a part of the community. Take part in the development process by providing your invaluable feedback!
Game Discussion
Steam User 17
Very nice looking merge puzzler. The backgrounds and buildings have a really polished look. As others have pointed out, this isn't a city builder, it's a puzzle game. The buildings are only divided into levels and have no other function than to be merged to the next level building. If you're fine with that, this is a good example of such puzzles. Just don't expect a city builder, or a variety of puzzle mechanics. You merge buildings, it looks pretty, that's it!
Steam User 8
Remember 2048? This is the same, but with buildings instead of numbers, complemented by tranquil art and music. I cannot express the peace I feel when playing Urbo.
Beautiful, calming, soothing, tranquil, these are but a few words I would use to describe Urbo. It is a simple yet addictive puzzle game, much like 2048, for those who were around during that craze. The loop is easy to learn, yet hard to master, requiring you to place and merge three buildings together to rank them up.
Note, it isn’t a traditional ‘city building’ game as the description may lead you to believe - Both through its aesthetics and gameplay, it presents as a cosy puzzle game. It features three play modes, six biomes, and a variety of building styles, however, there’s not a lot of meat on the bone. There’s a combo system in place to earn you bonus cards to help you escape tight situations, but other than that, what you see is what you get.
Overall, I highly recommend this to those seeking a relatively chill and cosy puzzle experience. The art and sound design are top notch, elevating the experience by creating a soothing atmosphere, but I am left wanting more puzzle depth. The loop may be simple, but Urbo is the perfect game time to pick up and play on short stints.
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Steam User 8
A combo between Islanders and 2048, figured I would do a quick game to figure out the mechanics and lo and behold. 1,5 hours are gone. Runs great on the Steamdeck as well and is perfect to chill out with! Highly recommend it, especially for the sale price, can't go wrong with that!
Steam User 7
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URBO is a city building puzzle game developed by the Door 407 team. You might already know them for their medieval city builder game Diplomacy is Not an Option. Despite its appearance, it is not a traditional city builder. The buildings are purely cosmetic and do not have any specific use besides merging them to complete the puzzle. URBO has a very mellow atmosphere and definitely gives some Islander vibes.
The premise of the game is to build cities on floating islands. At the start you only have one island to build on, but eventually you get several floating islands you can construct. The overall goal of the game is pretty straightforward - you try and build a city with the highest population possible.
The mechanics are similar to a Match 3 game. You place your buildings as they come, and when three of the same level structures are placed together, they will merge and create a new building of the next level. There are buildings starting with one level all the way to eight levels. As in a Match 3 game, if you place your buildings well you will create a chain reaction. The larger the building, the more population it will add to your towns. Since there is a limit to the number of buildings you can place, you have to be strategic when deciding where to drop your buildings. Otherwise, you could get land locked. There are also cards you can earn in each playthrough. You earn these cards when you merge more than three buildings and create combos. Perks you can gain by using these cards are: adding extra an extra building, adding a level to a building of your choice, switching two buildings, or transporting a building to an empty cell.
As you play and the population of your island grows, you will unlock different types of buildings. There are eight different types, but these are entirely cosmetic. Additionally, you can switch the time of day between morning, day, evening and night. Each one has different looks and adds different lighting. All of these are just for aesthetics’ sake so you can create beautiful screenshots. There is a photomode where you can take shots without having the UI. The variety of options you can choose from means that every screenshot is unique. Furthermore, you can move the camera angle any way you wish. I really enjoyed playing with this photomode, and anyone who is a screenshot-lover will find this a rare treat in a puzzle game. It is a great way to share your completed towns with other players.
In addition, as you play you will start to unlock different settings. You start with a dune area and gradually unlock more areas, which include the original dune, glade, desert, waterfall, valley and archipelago. Each of these areas have their own unique style and atmosphere. Even though it doesn’t change anything gameplay-wise, it’s fun to play in a different setting and makes for some fun variety.
There are also three game modes to choose from. First you have the Regular mode which is equivalent to an endless mode. You play until every cell on your island is full. The buildings you set down appear in a random order. Then you have the Puzzle mode which gives you a predetermined number of buildings of each size and you have to place all of them on your island. As in the Regular mode, you don’t control the order in which the buildings come. In the Puzzle mode you must be careful how you place your buildings because they will only fit in a specific way. I found the Puzzle mode unexpectedly challenging. It was surprising to me because the game’s vibe is so chill that I did not expect to encounter such a challenge. The last mode is Sessional, which is the same as Regular but with a limited number of buildings.
URBO has support for VR. While I have not tried it, I can only imagine how fun it would be to play it with a VR headset and feel like I’m part of the city. It is such a beautiful game; I really love the aesthetics. It is also optimized for the Steamdeck. I’ve tried playing on it and it ran very smoothly.
URBO is such a relaxing game, and the music completes the chilled vibe - I had a great time! I loved the automatic saves because it meant that I could play in small sessions without having to worry about losing my progress. When you fire up the game, there’s a ‘My Towns’ section which is divided in two sub-sections. One is for finished towns, where you can revisit your completed towns to admire them and enter photomode to share them with other players. There’s also another sub-section for games in progress. You can simply pick up where you left off and continue building. For those who love to compare their progress, there is another section where you can see your global stats. It was kind of fun to see my best record and try to beat it.
If you are looking to a relaxing game to play after a hard day’s work, or you just want to wind down over the weekend, URBO is definitely the game for you. With its soothing music and beautiful graphics, it’s perfect for enjoying a short session. Despite the chilled vibe, don’t be fooled, URBO’s Puzzle mode is quite challenging. The gameplay is simple and easy to pick up, and had me coming back over and over again.
Positives
Very relaxing game
Fun photomode
Challenging puzzle mode
Simple mechanics
Negatives
Only for puzzle-lovers
Final Score: 8/10
URBO is a relaxing game with simple mechanics and beautiful graphics. It has a chilled vibe but is challenging enough for those looking for something a little more difficult.
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Key provided by the developer/publisher for review purposes. Any opinions expressed are entirely my own!
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Steam User 4
A decent and chill match 3 puzzle game where you build bigger buildings by matching.
You have multiple different locations available (each have different grids or gimmicks), different building skins, times of day and game modes you can play around with. On top of that you can also earn card power ups to help you on your city building journey.
I wish there was some way of getting rid of buildings once they are built to the max level (8) so they are out of your way to be able to build even more and make it essentially an infinite game. Also a way to back out of the card menu without actually using a powerup would be nice.
Runs without any issues on Linux with Proton (9.0-3).
Steam User 4
Maybe a 2048 style game but boy is it super chill and addictive. Soothing music is great for late night wind down. Takes a few attempts at each building type to get use to each value.
HINT: hit TAB to show the block number if you can not make one out.
Gets a solid 10/10 from me.
Steam User 5
Really relaxing game with good visuals and music. The different designs of the buildings look really cool and the gameplay is simple but fun.