How Square Town works

Square Town (square.pov.town) is a favicon wall: a grid of 1×1 squares where each square is free to claim and shows the favicon of a URL you paste. You pick your own cell. Anyone can take your square by paying double what you paid, $1 minimum; anyone can kiss your icon, free and in public; the wall grows outward whenever the live area is 75 % full. No accounts, no subscriptions, no uploads.

At a glance

Rule	Value
Price per square	free — $0, no card; a URL and an email address
Square Town size	always 1×1 — no sizes
What you submit	a URL and an email address; the favicon is fetched for you
The Throne	4×4 dead centre, $100 intro, one owner
Eviction	pay 2× what the current owner paid, $1 minimum (card, Stripe); the next evictor pays 2× yours
Bulldozing	same price as an eviction, anonymous, nothing placed — the lot reopens at $0
Kiss the icon	free, anyone; public, counted, each kiss adds a storey to the tower
Live area at launch	central 16×16; +4 cells each side at 75 % full, up to 1024×1024
Proof of ownership	a secret deed URL (no login); mailed to the address you gave
Analytics	views, clicks, kisses free; per-day breakdown $5 once
Live updates	WebSockets to every open browser; 30 s polling fallback

How to claim a square#

The form is two fields. The rest is choosing where to stand.

The short way: press Claim a free square — the yellow button in the bar (bottom-left on a phone), and the first button on the welcome card. The town walks you to the nearest free cell, rings it and offers it; press Claim it and you're at step 3. Any other empty cell still works the long way:

1. Open the town at square.pov.town. You'll see the currently live area (16×16 at launch); the locked rest of the 1024×1024 grid is hidden so the wall never looks empty. Empty cells show trees and lakes — the trees stand on free land; the lakes don't count.
2. Pick a cell. Hover an empty cell (it highlights, and a label says Free square — click to claim it) and click it — tap on touch. That exact cell is the one you're claiming. Location is the game: next to the Throne, in a corner, beside a rival — your call. The label also says why a cell isn't for sale: a lake, the hills, the ring around the Throne, or a claim someone else is in the middle of.
3. Paste your URL. Type yoursite.com (with or without https://). Square Town resolves the domain, drops a leading www., and previews the favicon in the field within about a third of a second. There is nothing to upload — the icon comes from Google's favicon service.
4. Add your email. No account, no password. The address is where your deed link is mailed and where the warning lands when someone takes your cell.
5. Claim it. Press Claim (or Enter). It's free — $0, no card, no checkout. The cell is yours instantly.
6. Keep the deed. The town gives you a deed link, /deed/<your square's slug>/<a secret key>. That deed link is your only proof of ownership — bookmark it; a copy is mailed to the address you gave. It also lands under the "My deeds" button in that browser. Confetti happens. Everyone else's open wall shows your claim live.
7. Get checked for a favicon. Right after the claim Square Town asks Google's favicon service for your icon. If it answers 404, you're a clown until you fix it (see below).

Already in town? Square Town seeds squares for sites it likes, favicon up, no owner on file. If yours is one of them, the card says "Your site? Claim the square — free": leave an email and the square and its deed are yours, deed link mailed — nothing paid, nobody evicted.

Optional after that: kiss your own icon now and then, watch your views and clicks on the deed page, and keep an eye on the live feed — every visitor who clicks through to your site shows up there ("👆 someone clicked through to yoursite.com"), your square pops on every open wall, and one day someone may pay $1 to take your spot.

What a square is#

Every square is one cell of the 1024×1024 grid, 1×1, free. There are no 2×2s, no 10×10 blocks, no "premium sizes" — the only exception is the Throne (below). A square shows exactly one thing: the favicon of the URL you gave. Click a favicon and a card opens with the domain, when it arrived, its views, clicks and kisses, and buttons to visit, kiss, or evict.

Clicking "Visit" goes through /go/:id, a 302 redirect that counts the click and adds utm_source=square.pov.town&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=square to your URL so you can see the wall in your own analytics. It is a redirect, not a link on a page — Square Town gives you visitors, not link equity.

The Throne#

The 4×4 block at the exact centre of the wall (cells 510–513 on both axes) is the Throne: a gold tile with a crown, one owner, the first thing every visitor's eye lands on. Its introductory price is $100. Whoever holds it can be evicted like anyone else, for double the last price paid — so $100 becomes $200, then $400, $800, $1,600 and so on. It prices itself.

The one-cell ring around the Throne is its aura. Nobody may build there; try and you get a buzz and a message about the aura being too strong. It keeps the crown from being crowded.

Evictions#

Any claimed square can be taken by anyone, at any time, by paying double what the current owner paid for it, with a $1 minimum — so a free square costs $1 to take. Evictions are paid by card through Stripe, one-time. The evictor takes the exact cell; the evicted site's status becomes "evicted", its /go/ link stops working, and its deed page gets an EVICTED stamp ("thoughts and prayers"). The eviction is announced in the live feed to every open browser: "💀 newsite.com evicted oldsite.com for $1".

The escalation is the point. You paid nothing; evicting you costs $1; evicting the evictor costs $2; then $4, $8, $16. A spot that people actually fight over becomes too expensive to fight over, and it settles. Two people can't evict the same square at once — the first checkout reserves it for 30 minutes and the second is told "someone is already evicting this square. Vultures everywhere."

Evicted owners are not refunded (and a free square has nothing to refund). You claimed a square on a wall whose rulebook says any square can be evicted for double, $1 minimum. If you want to make eviction unattractive, be somewhere unremarkable — or be so popular that nobody dares. Read the economics of eviction for what that means in practice.

Bulldozing 🚜#

An eviction has a quieter cousin. Bulldozing a square costs exactly the same — double what the owner paid, $1 minimum — but you don't place anything: no URL, no email, no name. The owner is evicted and notified like any eviction, nobody moves in, and the empty lot goes straight back on the market at $0, where anyone (including the site you just flattened) can claim it for free. The feed announces it as "🚜 Somebody paid $4 to bulldoze example.com" — and somebody is all anyone will ever know, because bulldozing is anonymous by design.

Why would you pay for nothing? Because it isn't nothing: it removes a competitor's favicon from a spot you care about without putting your own name on the deed. Because the ladder resets — a bulldozed lot is free again, so the $8 square your rival was proud of becomes a $0 square anyone can squat. Or because it's Tuesday. See evicting your competitor for the whole playbook, and bulldozing in the glossary for the short version.

Kiss the icon#

Icons want attention. Anyone can kiss any icon: click the favicon, press "💋 Kiss this icon". It's free, it's public (the feed says things like "a stranger kissed yoursite.com. Out of respect, presumably"), it's counted on the card and the "Kiss of the World" board, and it adds a storey to the tower. No account, no email, nothing to sign in to — click and it's kissed. Five kisses per icon per person per hour — enough to show you care, not enough to kiss your own tower to the moon. A kiss plays its little 💋 burst on every open browser, not just yours.

Kissing your own icon is allowed and expected. Kissing rivals' icons out of pity is also allowed. See kiss the icon, explained.

Ring unlocking: how the wall grows#

Only the central 16×16 is live at launch. Each time the claimed squares cover 75 % of what can actually be claimed (the lakes are scenery and the ring around the Throne is off-limits — neither counts), the wall grows by 4 cells in every direction: 16×16 → 24×24 → 32×32 → 40×40 … up to the full 1024×1024, which is 1,048,576 squares, all free to claim. Unlocking is announced in the feed ("🔓 RING UNLOCKED! The wall just grew to 24x24") and pushed to every open browser instantly.

The locked area is never drawn, and the default view fits exactly the live area, so the wall looks full-ish from day one and never like a million empty pixels. Scarcity is real inside the live ring: cells near the centre are the ones everyone can see without zooming, and they run out first. Newly unlocked rings are the quiet frontier — still free, just further out.

Hall of Clowns#

When a claim completes, Square Town asks Google's favicon service for the domain's icon. HTTP 200 means you have one; 404 means you don't, and your square shows a 🤡 instead of an icon, plus a public listing in the Hall of Clowns in the side panel. A transient failure leaves you unmarked. Add a favicon to your site, then click your square (or open your deed) and press "I fixed my favicon — recheck". If the icon now resolves you leave the Hall with a "🎈 escaped" line in the feed. Rechecks are free and unthrottled. If you don't know how, read how to add a favicon.

Whack-a-Clown 🔨#

The Hall isn't just shame — it has a consequence. Kissing is how visitors show love; whacking is how they administer justice: anyone, no deed, no payment, can whack a clown square off the wall. The rules keep it fair:

• Only free claims are whackable. A paid clown bought immunity from the mob — money is the only thing that removes a paid square (the eviction economics are sacred). The Throne is paid, so it's exempt.
• 24-hour grace. A fresh claimant gets a day to read the 🤡 on their deed and add a favicon (a five-minute job) before open season; the deed shows the countdown.
• The mercy check. Before any whack lands, Square Town re-runs the full favicon check, fresh. If the icon now resolves, the whack fails and saves them — clown cleared, 🎈 escape in the feed. Every whack attempt is a free favicon amnesty; the mallet cannot remove a site that mended its ways. If the check can't be completed, nothing happens: unproven guilt walks.
• One whack every 10 seconds, town-wide. The Hall drains as theater, one act at a time, and each whack is a broadcast event — a giant mallet drops on the tower, live, on every open browser.
• No land grab. The freed lot goes straight back on the market with no reservation for the whacker. Want their spot? That's an eviction, and evictions cost money. The whacker stays anonymous, and the whacked domain may reclaim a square immediately — the door was never locked.

Deeds: proof of ownership without accounts#

There are no accounts on Square Town. When you claim, you get a deed: a page at /deed/<slug>/<key> — your square's public slug, then a random secret key nobody can guess (deeds from before September 2026 live at /deed.html?token=…, which still works). It's a certificate showing the domain, plot number and coordinates, price paid ($0 for a claim), date held since, views, clicks, kisses, and status (in good standing or evicted). The deed link is the only proof of ownership. It's mailed to the email address you gave when you claimed; lose the link and that mail and it's gone — there is no password reset because there is no password.

The "📜 My deeds" button in town lists deeds claimed in this browser (kept in localStorage, validated against the server) as a convenience copy. It's not an account; clear your browser data and the list is gone, though the deed links themselves keep working.

Views, clicks, kisses — and the $5 analytics unlock#

Every square counts three things, all free and visible on its card and deed:

• Views — someone opened your square's card in town. Counted once per square per browser session.
• Clicks — someone actually went to your site via /go/:id.
• Kisses — someone pressed 💋.

For $5, one time, the deed page unlocks per-day analytics: a table of views and clicks per day (the most recent 30 days with activity), forever, no subscription. Nothing else is behind a paywall.

The wall is 3D#

Top-down, the wall is a classic 2D grid. It's actually a three.js scene seen through an orthographic camera, and ctrl+drag (on touch: two-finger drag up; twist two fingers to rotate) — or the 2D / 3D switch in the bottom-right corner — tilts the camera into 3D. In 3D each favicon becomes a tower whose height is its clicks plus its kisses — nothing yet is a flat tile, each click or kiss adds a storey and the climb eases off as it goes, so a well-loved tower never stops growing — with sides tinted by the icon's dominant colour. Empty cells have trees and lakes (a fish jumps now and then); a shadow-casting sun follows your local time of day, so the wall looks different at 07:00 and 22:00; and the town has a life of its own: birds, a hot-air balloon, cloud shadows, shooting stars, a cat, rabbits, ducks on the lakes, joggers, a delivery van on every purchase, rain and rainbows, fireworks after dark, a tortoise — and rarer things if you watch long enough; the field guide has pictures of all of it, with rarity and when to look. It also mirrors your real sky: if it's raining where you are, it rains in town. Why bother? See why the wall is 3D.

Controls and URL parameters#

URL parameters set the starting view or open things directly (?cinema=1 starts in full-screen mode — handy for a wall display):

Live feed, boards, theme, sound#

The top-right panel has two tabs. Live feed shows the last 20 events — claims, evictions, kisses, unlocks, clowns joining and escaping — updated instantly over a WebSocket to every open browser, with a 30-second poll as fallback if the socket drops. Below it sits the Hall of Clowns. 🏆 Boards ranks squares: Kiss of the World (most kissed), Clickbait Royalty (most clicked), Eye Candy (most viewed); click a row to jump to that square. The panel collapses and remembers it.

Dark and light themes follow your OS until you press 🌙/☀️, after which your choice is remembered. Sound effects (a kiss, an eviction, a claim) can be muted with 🔊. The 3D wall needs JavaScript and WebGL.

The rules, in one table#

FAQ#

How much does a square on Square Town cost?#

Nothing. Paste a URL and an email address and it's yours — no card. Every square is 1×1; there are no sizes and no subscription. Money only enters when someone evicts you ($1 minimum, doubling after that). Details on the pricing page.

Can I choose where my square goes?#

Yes — you click the exact empty cell you want inside the currently live area. Only the Throne (4×4 centre) and its one-cell aura ring are off limits.

What happens if someone evicts me?#

They pay double what you paid ($1 minimum, so $1 for a free square), take your cell, and the feed announces it. Your deed shows "evicted", your /go/ link stops working, and you are not refunded. The next evictor would pay double their price.

When does the wall get bigger?#

When claimed squares cover 75 % of the live area, it grows by 4 cells in every direction (16×16 → 24×24 → 32×32 …), up to 1024×1024.

Do I need an account?#

No. You give an email address when you claim — no password, no login — and ownership is a secret deed URL. Bookmark it or have it mailed to you; there is no password reset.

Is Square Town good for SEO or backlinks?#

No. Clicks are 302 redirects through /go/:id, and the wall is a WebGL canvas. Square Town is visibility to a niche audience and a game, not link equity.

Can my square be removed without anyone paying?#

Only if it's a clown. A free-claim square with no favicon can be whacked off the wall by any visitor once it's 24 hours old — free, one whack every 10 seconds town-wide, and the whack re-checks your favicon first, so adding one at any point saves you. Paid squares can only ever be removed by a paid eviction.

How do I see the wall in 3D?#

Hold ctrl and drag, or hold shift and press the arrow keys (two-finger drag up on touch). Towers are as tall as their clicks plus kisses; the sun follows your local time.