In previous releases, the number of tunnels through the town's river was limited, but the developers decided that made the game too hard. They must also track the type of commuters and where they can transfer, where the lines end, and where they overlap. Players must keep track of the type of stations that appear-circles appear most often, then triangles, then squares, and then rare other shapes. But subway lines cannot cross, which makes rerouting all the more difficult. The longer the system lasts, the more frantic the game gets: Each reroute of a line demands rerouting another and, sometimes, rethinking the city's entire transit strategy in a matter of seconds. A countdown clock starts, and if those commuters are still waiting after 20 seconds, the game ends. If the subways can't keep up with demand, and there are too many commuters waiting at a station, an exclamation point pops up, the station vibrates. But ultimately, the only thing the player can do, since the trains and commuters move on their own, is re-arrange. You can run a line faster, add a car to a line, to build a bigger station. As the city grows and the player molds the layout of the transit map, upgrade options appear. The subway system, too, will never be perfect. The Dinosaur Polo team is making adjustments with every alpha release, because, like real commutes, it's impossible to get this one perfect. "Each of the passengers runs an A* search algorithm throughout the network, taking into account such things as how full stations are (you want to avoid stopping or staying at full stations), how full trains are (no point waiting for a full train), how long the wait for a transfer train is likely to be," Curry says. That is to say: Like a real-life commuter, the circles and squares strategize the easiest and fastest route home. The exact routes they take are akin to an algorithmic version of the calculations a real-life subway rider makes, developer Peter Curry says. Square commuters want to end up at square business stops in the mornings, for example, and circle commuters want to reach their circle home stops in the evenings. Where those travelers are headed depends on time of day and the day of the week. The trains and commuters run on their own, with the trains sticking to their lines and the passengers going only to the destinations with the same shape as their icons (triangles go to triangles, circles to circles, and squares to squares). As public-transit overlord, the player plots up to five new subway lines from scratch, rerouting them as new stations and riders appear. The number of stations and of commuters increases as time goes by. Mini Metro is what developers call a "minimalistic subway layout game." The action opens with three stations and three possible lines. They hope to release a version for desktop, iOS, and Android in the second quarter of this year. Dinosaur Polo Club, a New Zealand development studio, created the game in 2013 and has been releasing new alpha versions including one that went online this Wednesday. It's playable online and as a standalone app for Macintosh, Windows, and Linux. Mini Metro is a Unity-based game in alpha release on Steam's Greenlight community. The challenge: To keep those people moving as the city expands and expands. That's the point: To build a public transportation system that takes riders where they want to go and leaves as few of them waiting around as possible. And unlike a regular transit system, beset by service changes and construction-related delays, this one is malleable. But unlike Iowa City, Iowa, this place has a subway and an endlessly growing population. Perfect casual game.The town looks eerily similar to my own: sparsely populated, with a river running through it. “Love it! Simple gameplay, deep tactics.“Players have one aim: to design a subway system that works.”.“Mini Metro: fun game simulates planning and running public transit system.”.“If you won’t take my word for it that a game about mass-transit system design can be a tense, white-knuckle thriller, go play the free in-browser beta of Mini Metro yourself.”.“It’s a small thing, but I’ve had the tab open with the game running for the past 40 hours.”.“Mini Metro Lets You Design Your Own Minimalist Subway System”.“If you love the city-planning aspect of Sim City but can’t handle the pressure of playing god, then you may have just found your new favorite time-waster.”.– Emanuel Maiberg, iQ by Intel (article no longer present) “Mini Metro is such a perfect marriage of form and content”.– Philippa Warr, .uk (article no longer present) “Mini Metro is a game which marries city planning and London tube map porn thanks to its ultra-minimalist layout.”.“If you’ve ever wanted to design a subway map, you should play ‘Mini Metro’.”.
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