How to play
The basic idea of the game is quite simple: You are the mayor of a city and decide what to build. First you should provide power and water, e.g. by placing solar panels and water towers somewhere in your city. After that, declare zones for residential, commercial and industrial buildings. Provide power and water from your sources to the zones by using wires and pipes. Once everything is setup and connected with roads people will move into your city automatically. You can make them happy by building parks, sport facilities etc. If you provide education they will eventually level up and build better houses. They will then also pay more taxes which you can use to extent your city even further. Be cautious to not place dirty buildings near to residential areas, they might not like it or even become ill. Speaking of illness, eventually you will have to take care of fires by building fire departments, take care of crimes by building police stations and take care of health by building hospitals. Not to mention potential traffic issues you may run into if you forget to update your road system to increased demand. There's so much to do
Plugins
What are plugins?
In general, plugins are extensions for the game that can be downloaded from the Plugin Store (within the game) or from external sources. Plugins can contain a large variety of content. Most plugins add new buildings to the game.
Can I create a plugin on my own?
Yes, you can! And it might be even easier than you think. What you basically need are tools to 1. write text files (in so called json format) and to 2. create graphics that go along with them. You are free to do that directly on your device or on a PC. See the getting started topic to get an overview on all the things you can do and how. After you've made a plugin you can publish it in our plugin showcase or in the Plugin Store. The latter one will reward you with diamonds for each download that your plugin gets, but there are quality requirements your plugins has to met first. In any case you will need to register in our forum to publish your own plugins.
Online Mode
Online mode refers to the ability to upload regions to our servers. This allows for some semi-coop game play where multiple people can have their cities in the same online region. There are separate rules for using the Online Mode.
Pricing
You can upload a currently open region in the region view using the button with the three lines. Uploading a region costs diamonds or region coins (in case of the desktop version of the game). The region upload price is calculated as max{ 100, 2 * cityCount, 4 * regionArea }. Locking the region using a password doubles the price. The numbers in the formula may be subject to change.
Region Coins
In the desktop version of the game you earn region coins daily by logging into the game and playing for at least five minutes. You see your amount of region coins when trying to upload a region.
Content
Can I create my own region?
Yes, since version 1.8.40 the game contains a region creator that allows you to generate your own regions within the game.
Can I put my own music into the game?
Yes, you can! The game will play the music placed into the TheoTown/music folder. See the tutorial on how to use your own music to learn more about that.
Device transfer
I switched my device, how can I transfer my cities to the new one?
You have to move the files from your old to your new device manually. You can do that by connecting both devices to a PC. All what you have to do then is to copy the whole TheoTown folder to your new device. The way you access the game folder depends on the platform that you are using:
- Android - The game folder is located at Android/data/info.flowersoft.theotown.theotown/files which can also be accessed on the device itself by using Google's file explorer
- iOS - The game folder is accessible as a virtual folder called "TheoTown" via iTunes after connecting the device. On the device itself you can use the Files app to access that virtual folder.
- Desktop - In case you want to transfer from or to PC, the game data is stored in /Users/YourUsername/TheoTown
I switched my device, how can I transfer purchases/diamonds?
Google manages one-time purchases that include real money. So these will automatically be available on your new device if you've logged into the same Google account there.
You can collect Achievements and can participate in the public leaderboards after connecting to Google Games (Android only). On desktop you can get achievements if you are connected to Steam. However, to synchronize items such as diamonds, plugins and use online mode you have to login into a forum account. For that you have to make an account first. After that, you can go into the game, open the game menu, tap on account and enter your details.
Misc
Can I become a beta tester?
As of right now you can become a beta tester on the following platforms, only:
- Android (Play Store) - You can join the beta version program here: https://play.google.com/apps/testing/in ... n.theotown
- Desktop (Steam) - You can join the beta program in the Steam settings panel for TheoTown
Running the game on PC/Mac OS/Linux
In case you have trouble running the game please try to install Java manually
(e.g. from https://www.java.com/download/). After the installation you may have
to restart your PC for the installation to complete.
If you have tried that but still are receiving error messages you may want to
search for updates for you graphics card and install them.
For Intel GPUs it seems to be a solution to use a specific version of Java:
viewtopic.php?t=11148
In case you have trouble with too small UI because of high DPI display you may
want to enable DPI compatibility mode by windows for TheoTown.exe
(Right click on it->Properties->Compatibility->High DPI settings
->Override DPI setting with "System"). The way on how to do that may vary
dependent on OS and language.
On Android, the game claims that it was hacked. What can I do?
Please consider to get the original version from the Play Store. If you, for some reason, cannot do that you can acquire an official apk from here.
How to delete the game?
We're sorry to hear that you want to remove the game from your device. You can uninstall the app directly in the Store that you used to download it. Additionally, in order to delete city data, you may want to remove the TheoTown folder. It's location of this folder is dependent on the platform that you are using:
- Windows: In C:\Users\Your username\
- Linux/Mac: In /home
- Android: The data will be removed automatically when removing the app, unless you select to retain it upon uninstall (this feature is not available on all versions of Android)
- iOS: The data will be removed automatically when removing the app
Is there a version of the game for use in schools?
Please get in touch with us via lobby@theotown.com
In case your question wasn't answered please don't hesitate to contact us using the contact form.