Starglass is a desert town builder for your phone. Tap the sand to lay a street, tap the street to raise a house, and keep tapping until a whole quarter of kasbah roofs, palms and rooftop pools stands round the oasis. Dig water, open the desert patch by patch, and grow landmarks that sing.
Tap to lay paving, tap again to raise a house, hold to take it down. The houses shape themselves as you build — domes over four tops in a square, ridge roofs along a row, courtyards inside a block, arches where a room spans a lane. Nothing is a menu; everything is a tap on the town.
Dig water anywhere — through paving, even under a house, which rises onto stilts. Put a pool on a roof and it spills over the edge as a waterfall into the pool below. Sand near water turns green, and a planted roof becomes a hanging garden. Pools, falls, wells and palms all lift the town's mood, and the mood sets the taxes.
A treasury, a caravan beacon, a marble quarry, a song hall, a lotus bath, a starwell, an observatory and more stand whole over a square of your town, and grow grander every time you stack one. Last of all comes the Starheart: the shard of the fallen star, which grows gems from its own glass while you are away.
Trade caravans cross the dunes to your beacon with gold and marble. Research is done at the buildings themselves — dyes at a market stall, masonry at the quarry, tax collectors at the treasury — and runs from a minute to three days. Marble is the thing you never have enough of.
Your land starts as a circle of stakes round the oasis. Twenty-seven patches lie beyond it in three rings; you open the ones you want, in the order you want, so the town grows your shape and not a given one. From level 8 you can found a second oasis, and every oasis shares one purse and one level.
A landmark goes down whole, over a cell and every cell round it, and rises a level each time you stack another on it. Five levels apiece, each grander than the last.
Day turns to night on its own, and the weather with it: clear spells with dust devils out on the dunes, overcast skies, rain that leaves puddles holding the sky, thunderstorms, and a rainbow after. Lamps come on, caravans wait out the rain, and the mood of the town falls while the weather lasts.
The game is still in development. Email us for a question, a bug, or to hear when it lands on the App Store.