Preview code used, with many thanks to Sandbox Strategies and Mastiff.
Tinytopia by indie development studio MeNic Games and publishers Mastiff is a city building game. The game is slated for release on August 30th,2021. Tinytopia is described on its Steam page as having a “whimsical city-planning” vibe offering “innovative building mechanics.” I was lucky enough to try out a preview build of the game.

Newly-elected Mayor
You play as the newly-elected Mayor, and the tiny wooden legless citizens of Tinytopia look up to you. Your job is to build and develop peaceful, vibrant, and flourishing toy cities and towns for them to inhabit.
The preview build of the game starts with a tutorial that tells you all you really need to know to be a successful mayor of a thriving city. Tinytopia presents players with different scenarios that serve to acclimate new mayors to their towns. For example, you could be tasked with building a three-tier store or completing a special building in one of the levels.

Stack Buildings
You’ll collect taxes from your citizens allowing you to buy and place buildings, and decorations such as flower pots and trees around the map to increase the happiness of your citizens. As you build your city, you also have to supply power so your citizens have power to their homes and workplaces.

Then you must also place buildings for your citizens to work in. Emergency services are needed as well, such as Fire station, police station and a hospital. You’ll also need to keep an eye out for and protect your citizens from all sorts of catastrophes.
You can stack buildings on top of each other much like a child’s building blocks. As you stack a trio of little houses together they make a much fancier level 3 house, you’ll unlock the blueprint for the fancier house.

Tiny Maps
TinyTopia is essentially a physics-based city building game. It plays pretty much like a lighthearted physics-based playground than a heavy city-builder with lots of minute detail to worry about. The maps background remind me of a child’s bedroom, with toys and furniture dotting the edges of the table.

The preview build of Tinytopia has quite a few levels to try out. All the levels offer a decent challenge with distinct hooks. Whether it’s building a well-balanced town on a ruler balancing on books in Tower of Booktopia. Or try crafting an island retreat that can hold up against a Godzilla wind-up toy. I really like the look of the game, it’s childlike with the little wooden people you see enjoying the park. The block building premise is a lovely change from stat heavy city builders.

Build and Destroy
Eventually, players will be able to build sprawling metropoles. Only to later be granted the freedom to destroy them by way of tornadoes, fires, UFOs, or Godzilla attacks. In the preview build, I was able to build up my city and click a button to place Godzilla in the middle of the city.

Then I sat back and watched it wreak havoc by knocking down buildings. While it might sound strange to build up your city and then deliberately destroy half of it, I found this a lot of fun and enjoyed the rebuilding of my city afterwards.

Full Release
When the full game is released it will contain 24 levels and more than 80 blueprint plans to discover. Starting with a tutorial level, then on to Fledgling Fields, UFO Crash Site, Tower of Booktopia, Teeter Town, San Francisco, New York, and more, with a free-play Sandbox mode and a lot of other fun features. Plus, loads of Steam Achievements and Trading Cards too.
Tinytopia has a release date of August 30th, 2021. The game will be available for Windows PC and Mac with Linux support coming post-launch. Tinytopia will be available for purchase on Steam, the Epic Games Store, Microsoft Store, and GOG.com for $14.99 across all major territories. I for one can’t wait to try out the full game once it is released.