Town to City is preparing to give its builders substantially more control over the look and layout of their settlements. Dutch independent developer Galaxy Grove has announced a free update for the cosy city builder, scheduled to arrive on PC on Tuesday, October 27, 2026.
The update concentrates on player expression rather than a single new building category or management mechanic. Its headline additions are modular mansion and palace construction sets, a revised road system that can be painted directly onto the map, and improvements to the gizmo placement tool. Together, those changes are intended to make elaborate districts, grand estates and finely dressed streets easier to build without sacrificing the game's relaxed creative focus.
For a city builder where the visual identity of a settlement is a major part of the appeal, the update's most notable feature may be the new modular architecture. Rather than being limited to a fixed mansion or palace blueprint, players will be able to assemble distinctive larger structures from a selection of individual parts. The goal is to let a prominent home, civic landmark or royal residence feel specific to the town around it.
Build mansions and palaces piece by piece
The mansion and palace sets include recolourable foundations, walls and roofs, giving players control over the basic materials and palette of a structure. That flexibility should make it possible to create buildings that match an established neighbourhood, deliberately contrast with it, or form the visual centerpiece of an entirely new district.
For useful background on this topic, read Razer Reveals Translucent Green Xbox 25th Anniversary Peripheral Collection.
Galaxy Grove is also supplying a selection of finishing elements for the modular sets. Builders will have access to different windows, doors, balconies and decorative pieces. Such components can be particularly important in a game built around small-scale city character: a balcony can turn a plain facade into a noble residence, while alternate windows or a different roof colour may help a row of large homes avoid looking identical.
The palace set naturally opens opportunities for more formal construction, whether players want to place an imposing landmark near a town square or create a sprawling complex on elevated terrain. Meanwhile, the mansion pieces offer a way to expand residential areas with houses that have more presence than ordinary homes. Because the parts are modular, the same set can support a compact, symmetrical building or a much more irregular estate.
This approach also gives players room to make architecture serve the surrounding landscape. A long mansion can follow a road, a collection of wings can frame a garden, and decorative elements can be used to make important buildings read clearly from a distance. The announcement does not outline limits on the size or specific configurations of these structures, but the emphasis is firmly on greater freedom when designing them.
For another perspective on this story, read Town to City's Free October Update Adds Modular Mansions, Paintable Roads and Smarter Building Tools.
Roads become a more flexible city-design tool
Roads are also receiving a major usability and visual update. Instead of handling them solely as conventional placed pieces, players will be able to paint roads directly onto their cities. For a builder focused on creating attractive townscapes, that could make it easier to shape paths, plazas and street networks around existing buildings and terrain.
Three new road textures are included in the free patch: Vibrant Plaza, Sandstone and Cobblestone. Each gives players another way to distinguish areas by purpose or atmosphere. Cobblestone can suit historic-looking central streets and intimate residential lanes, while Sandstone may complement warmer or more rustic environments. Vibrant Plaza, as its name suggests, provides a bolder option for gathering spaces and prominent public areas.
The new surfaces should be useful beyond simple decoration. Different road treatments can visually organize a settlement, guiding the eye from a commercial square to quieter housing, gardens or landmark buildings. A town's central plaza can look more ceremonial than its outskirts, for example, while paths near a palace can be given a finish that sets them apart from the everyday road network.
Paintable roads may also reduce some of the friction involved in revising a town after it has grown. City builders often invite players to return to early neighbourhoods with new ideas, but reworking connections can be cumbersome if streets are rigid. The announced change suggests that Town to City's road layout will be more adaptable for players who want to refine curves, expand open spaces or alter the boundaries of a district.
Gizmo improvements aim to preserve detailed work
The update will further improve the game's gizmo tool, an important part of precise object placement and scene dressing. Customized objects will now remain attached to the surfaces on which they were placed. In practical terms, this should help objects behave more reliably when their supporting building or surface is handled during later construction.
Objects will also retain their modifications when they are moved or duplicated. That change matters for anyone creating repeated decorative arrangements. A player who has adjusted an object to fit a particular facade, terrace or public square will not need to rebuild that customized look from scratch simply because it needs to be repositioned or copied elsewhere.
It is a relatively focused quality-of-life improvement, but one that fits neatly alongside the mansion and road additions. The more freedom a game gives players to customize structures and spaces, the more valuable it becomes to preserve that work while rearranging the city. Builders experimenting with balconies, ornaments, roads and other details should be able to iterate with fewer interruptions.
These gizmo revisions also encourage a more playful design process. Rather than treating an object's first placement as permanent, players can test a composition, move it, duplicate it and develop variations while keeping the custom changes that made it work. That is especially helpful when building a cohesive district where visual motifs need to repeat without becoming overly uniform.
A continuing expansion of Town to City's sandbox
Town to City entered Early Access in September 2025. Since then, the game has continued to grow through additions that broaden both the construction sandbox and the ways players can experience their creations. Previous updates have introduced animals, terraforming, bridges and a first-person Free Walk mode.
Those features provide useful context for the October update. Terraforming and bridges offer tools for shaping a settlement around the land, while Free Walk makes it possible to view the finished result from a more personal, ground-level perspective. The forthcoming building, road and placement additions appear designed to give those towns more architectural personality when players explore them.
Town to City currently holds an Overwhelmingly Positive user rating on Steam. The continued focus on free additions suggests Galaxy Grove is building on the game's Early Access foundation by responding to the creative side of the experience: not merely expanding what a town can contain, but making it easier for players to decide how every corner of it should look.
For players already maintaining a large settlement, October 27 may be a good opportunity to revisit signature areas that were built before these tools existed. A central street could become a cobblestone boulevard, a quiet block might gain a custom mansion, or an overlooked hill could be transformed into the site of a palace complex. New players, meanwhile, will have more options available from the start for giving their first town a distinctive identity.
What arrives on October 27
The free PC update is scheduled to include the following core additions:
- Modular mansion building pieces.
- Modular palace building pieces.
- Recolourable foundations, walls and roofs for both sets.
- Windows, doors, balconies and other decorative architectural elements.
- A reworked system for painting roads directly onto a city.
- Three new road textures: Vibrant Plaza, Sandstone and Cobblestone.
- Gizmo tool changes that keep customized objects attached to their surfaces.
- Preservation of object modifications when customized items are moved or duplicated.
With modular estates at one end of the scale and finer placement behaviour at the other, Town to City's next update is aimed at the details that transform a functioning settlement into a place with its own visual story. The free update is due for the PC version on October 27, 2026.
Community
Discussion
Start the conversation.
No comments have been posted yet.