I made a train game prototype!

Games
1

It’s called Rail Surveyor and you can play it if you click on that link. [Update: Not anymore. PM me for a link on itch.io]

What is it? It’s a microstrategy game about discovering and exploiting resources. It’s like Minesweeper meets Railroad Tycoon. If you’ve played Oasis/Defense of the Oasis, you’ll see some similarities.

Most importantly: It’s a prototype. The art is crappy placeholder stuff (mostly stolen). The UI is serviceable at best. The costs and values of things have only gotten a cursory balancing.

Also, some of the important information you’d like to have at your fingertips can only be found in the rules document.

Access the Rules from the button on the bottom right of the screen.

I’m not going to say too much more now because I’d like to get some first impressions and some feedback on how easy it is to learn and play.

If you try it: Thanks! Let me know what you think (you can be honest) and feel free to ask me questions about how anything works.

2

You said Railroad Tycoon, and by that I’m really hoping you mean the boardgame version. I love that game. I will give it a go, and let you know. Probably tomorrow, but definitely soon.

3

Thanks for this! Here’s my quick feedback:

First two tries I had NO idea what I was doing (even after skimming the rules). For example, I wasn’t sure if you had to move your train through the actual resource spaces or not (you don’t) or if there was any reason to route your trains anywhere other than directly to the city (there isn’t, except for the factory). Once I got that stuff figured out, I was able to progress through several levels.

The biggest thing that would help, I think, would be if it showed, on hover, what you will get if you click (e.g. explore, rail, rights, trestle, etc), and how much it will cost you. (Hovering doesn’t work on mobile devices, so maybe that’s why you didn’t do it, but it would be SUPER helpful).

Also I’m a bit worried that there isn’t a sense of progression through the game – each level is pretty similar to the last. Something like technology progression, new kinds of resources, or new kinds of obstacles would help.

Really nice start!

4

I played a few times. I was never able to progress beyond the 1st level though, so this is coming from someone who (obviously) sucks at the game.

I can easily see this developing as a lightweight strategy-ish game.

The documentation seems ok for a first step. I would put the chart that’s on page 1 as an appendix though. If you’re not going to have an interactive tutorial I think it would be handy to have a “here’s how you play the game” section that details your order of actions and talks you through a game. So that a person can look at the page and see the whole game flow.

I think it would be useful to change the cursor to indicate modes: for example, when you click the “Place Station” button the cursor should change to indicate clicking on the map does something different from regular clicking.

The score shows “profits” at the end but that includes the cash you had unspent when you started the trains, so I’m not sure that’s an entirely accurate way to describe that money.

When the round (game) ends, it would be nice to toggle between the score screen and your layout so you could see the layout and maybe get some insight into how to do better.

I found a few bugs :

one station had “$Infinite” below it and my cash turned into “NaN” So I lost that round but had no idea how or why (except that I’m bad at running railroads!). I also got the “NaN” but a number of other times - I thought initially it was when my cash went above 100k but later I saw that happen so that wasn’t it.

I don’t think you should be able to click the “Run” button when you don’t have any stations on the board - because that would be something only a real dummy would try… don’t ask me how I know.

When clicking the “rules” button when the rules are open, it reloads the tab but doesn’t bring it to the front.

Philosophical Questions:

  • Is there strategy in exploring the map? I tried exploring the entire map but couldn’t determine if that was a smart move or not.

  • While being able to skip a technology can present an interesting decision, I don’t think it works unless you know what technologies you’re aiming for - which requires you to know the technology tree that isn’t ever displayed anywhere.

If I play more I will write down more thoughts. Hope these ramblings helped.

5

Alright a few initial thoughts. I’ll give it some more time and analysis later, but after a few rounds here they are:

-I got a weird bug. When transporting across the map a train went to the factory… then transported across nothing to the top left corner and got stuck. The factory was on the left edge, and so I don’t know if the bug was going into the corner, or going up 2.

-The resources are obtuse. Is just coal and gold viable? Do I need to have a station at every resource to generate? How much is any resource worth? Why is a station worth? Should I build multiple, or is one station going through multiple resources more valuable?

-The entire fog is almost meaningless. I get that surveying is part of the concept, but at the moment it is busywork to expose all, or nearly all, the map. Since it seems only resources have value empty space is worthless. Perhaps to put emphasis on exploration, while making the exploration actually be a decision point rather than spamming fog, have the map exposed in terrain, but the resources hidden. Have a survey fee, or even a survey building, that exposes resources.

-The amount due at the end of each turn should be exposed.

-Also 200,000 to start is really high.

-Some idea of the value add for factory would be helpful too.

Like I said this was after about 6 games that all ended after the first ‘turn’. I’ll try and parse out a bit more about the game later, but that’s my initial thoughts.

6

This is quite fun (I like Oasis a lot, I also really like train board games, so I’m very on-board with what you’re doing here). I played about 5-ish levels and made an enormous amount of mistakes. Current UI makes it very easy to spend a ton of money on something stupid (like placing a station in the middle of nowhere). My most unreasonable request is a ctrl+z! But I know how hard those are to code so at least an undo on the big ticket items would be nice.

It wasn’t clear to me if my research was carrying over from game to game. I started to regularly get a ton of lumber from game to game and bought 3-4 techs per game, many of which were repeats, so I wasn’t sure if I’d lost the tech between rounds, if the tech was just stacking with its previous iteration, or whether it was a replacing them. I think they were carried over because I seemed to do better every round I played (maybe I was just getting better at it).

I understand the Oasis feel of Explore then Activate, but I really wanted to use my money on the same map to exploit it more after the trains had started. Trains are such a good metaphor for engine building econ games, I just want the momentum of my economy to be to match the momentum of my trains! Maybe this could work with a limited number of activations? If you could do maybe 3 activations on each map it may get a bit more of that engine building feel without losing the explore / activate idea. You’d need more to spend money on (maybe upgrading tracks to speed movement, or upgrading stations to have two trains, etc.), but it seems like an area ripe for exploration.

The other thing the train game enthusiast in me wants is multiple destinations with varying desire for goods. This may very well be too complicated for the light-weight strategy feel you’re going for. But if there was a city with a high desire for coal, they could pay extra if it was delivered there. Having to choose which destination to deliver to, especially if the higher paying one was farther away, could lead to interesting decisions for how the trains travel. May also just be too think-y.

7

After a couple of test games to understand the rules, I played to the $300000 dividend level before stopping.

  • The exploration system needs to go. It’s just not interesting, but takes half the playtime of a level.
  • The game desperately needs an undo button for everything, even in a prototype form. For example on the last level I forgot to build a station that would’ve generated about 300k, and only realized the mistake when there was no train (didn’t matter for passing, but it did rob me of a personal high score so I was a bit annoyed).
  • Does the train routing really need to be part of the game? After you’ve built the network, it’s painfully obvious how to minimize the runtime, and the only question is whether to go through the factory or not.
  • The difficulty curve is all wrong. I was generally making 500k-700k on each level, so at a 20k dividend ratchet this would’ve gone on for a very long time. Though really there’s no point in the campaign since there seemed to be no gameplay progression and only extremely limited persistence.
  • Have you considered a hex map instead of squares? That’d increase the track placement options a lot.

I think there’s something to the routing / logistics part of the game, but right now that’s actually just 1/3rd of the game, and the other 2/3rds are meaningless. I’d concentrate on fleshing out the interesting bit, and strip out the rest. Higher resource density, all of it known, perhaps even a few resource conversion chains, and not enough money to exploit it all so that there would be some tough choices about maximizing track reuse and about which resources to exploit.

8

I’ll post my first thoughts before reading anyone else’s comments. Outside of balance being very out of whack (as expected) it’s a nice little game! I think the “Surveying” part of exploring the map should be adjusted so you begin the game seeing all major features of the map upon starting (mountains and rivers begin grayed out but visible), then once you survey them you see whether they have coal, gold etc. The survey costs thereafter can be a much higher than currently to balance the cost. Otherwise the game just starts the same with un-clicking a whole bunch of squares.

Also, I would really like to see more resources. But I always want that in every game I’ve ever played including Civ’s.

9

Hey, thanks, everybody! This is great!

JoshL, et al. – A way to see what action you will perform on a tile and how much it will cost is something I’ve thought about a lot and worked on a bit. Unfortunately, from the tests I’ve done so far, with the coding solution I’m using (Construct 2), replacing the mouse cursor leaves you with a very sluggish experience. And as someone said, it’s not real mobile-friendly, which I don’t want to lose unless I must. I put the list of prices on the first page because I figured people might have to keep going back to it for reference.

As for a sense of progression: Yes, I think that (like Oasis) it would be neat if every X levels or so some of the level generation and gameplay rules changed slightly to create a different dynamic. More mountains, multiple cities, higher costs for this or that. I want to establish the core systems before messing with that too much. It’s definitely the case that it gets samey after not too long.

Charlatan – Trust me, you’re not bad at the game, it just doesn’t do a great job explaining itself. I hope you might stick with it and be able to play through at least a few rounds. My advice would be to not worry too much about technology and wood, but focus on building stations near the other resources and running them to the city. I’ve never seen that $Infinite bug before! If you get that or the NaN thing again, take a screenshot if you’re able to and send it to me in a PM. I’d like to know what’s going on there.

Re: Exploring. A few of you mentioned that this seemed unnecessary or like busy work. That’s fair. It might be that the cost of it isn’t properly balanced (if it’s too cheap, then there’s no reason not to expose the whole map, and then it’s not an interesting decision). On the other hand, maybe it’s just not working at all. Here’s the concept: If you’re trying to conserve cash, you want to explore as little as possible. But you need to find the valuable resources like gold and coal, etc. When you run into empty hills or mountains, these give you some clues as to where to go looking for resources because they follow certain shapes and patterns (as well as providing obstacles to slow down your trains). I have some thoughts about giving exploration a bit more bite–slightly bigger map, higher cost further from the city–but I’m not sure yet which to try first.

CraigM – The trains teleporting to the top corner is a common effect of their pathing getting broken. I haven’t seen that for awhile, but I’m sure it’s because I play the game exactly how I expect everyone to play it, and I’m missing some perfectly reasonable action that I haven’t accounted for. If you see it again and can describe the path you laid out, that would be helpful. As for resources, gold and coal and wheat are the goods that make you money. Wood can be gathered as a secondary resource for research (there’s a technology that makes it worth some cash, too).

I’m pretty confident that $200,000 isn’t too high to start, but of course I understand the mechanics thoroughly. If you focus on building stations near gold, coal, and wheat, and connecting them to the city, I think you’ll start to make enough to get to later rounds. You’re totally right that knowing your goal would be nice, since it changes each round, but I also figured that whatever it is you’re going to be trying to maximize your profits regardless.

The factory is probably the most complex tile in the game. You have to run your track through it; when a train arrives at the factory, its value doubles (though you don’t get that money until it reaches the station). If you invest in the factory (so there’s a blue flag on it), you also make money when the train stops there. I think of it a bit like buying a processing facility in Railroad Tycoon. Tell me if any of that makes sense.

porousnapkin – Glad you like it! I wonder if familiarity with Oasis helps get one in the groove of the game a little quicker. No doubt an undo command would be huge–both a huge help and a huge undertaking! I’m glad you ask that question about research because I wasn’t at all clear on that point: Research resets every level. You don’t carry any tech over between levels (just cash and wood). Your suggestion of “activations” is one I’ve heard from another playtester and it does make sense to give the game a feeling of building upon itself. I will definitely be considering it. I had thought of multiple cities, but not to have them looking for different goods! I’ll hang on to that idea!

jsnell – See above for some thoughts on exploring and undo. I agree that the routing would be great to have automated. Doing it manually was not how I originally envisioned it, but it’s turned out to be the best option for the prototype, although I know it’s tedious. An automated system might be a bit beyond my capabilities (I’m actually not really much of a programmer). In a lot of cases, it would be totally simple to direct the train down the shortest path to the city. The factory complicates things; you at least have to ask the player “Would you like to route this train through the factory?” Extra player input, but basically the same functionality as going to the city. In rare cases, though, you have multiple routes possible and the speed the trains travel over the different terrain–which can be affected by improvements like trestles and also technologies you’ve bought–impacts which path you want to take. Having the game work that out it not impossible, just a bit complex. And I think sometimes you’ll want the ability to tweak the path, and off the top of my head I’m not sure what the interface for that looks like. Anyway, agreed, it’s a conspicuously burdensome system for the player and ideally it shouldn’t be.

The difficulty curve is definitely not terribly well tuned. And it’s true that the only incentive for playing through level after level thus far is getting a high score. Which is not saved or recorded in any way yet. As mentioned above, I picture a campaign taking you to a new region every four or five levels, with each region having slightly different map generation traits, new terrain types, or special rules.

Wow, a hex map really would make things interesting! I guess I hadn’t really considered it. Certainly works for a lot of train boardgames. It would be an overhaul, but I don’t think it would change most of the underlying logic. I will certainly consider it.

Thanks for your time and thoughts, everyone. If you play more, please tell me what else you find is working or not working!

10

Thanks for playing, jpinard! As it is right now (which is not to say this is the best way), the location of the resources are predictable if you know all the terrain on the map, as they follow very strict patterns. This is meant to make exploring interesting because the terrain provides a hint about where the valuable stuff is. But, yeah, a totally different approach–a less contrived one, for sure–would require you to search the various terrain for randomized spots that actually have gold, coal, etc.

More resources are totally possible. I think it’s true that I definitely have the bare minimum at the moment.

11

Just played again, failed at the $340,000 level. I think I get the mini-strategy of using the terrain clues to find the resources as cheaply as possible, laying out your network to be fast but cheap, deciding on techs, and so on. And it has a better “game over” screen than Beyond Earth!

Personally, I’d like more feedback before clicking Go. Obviously, you’ll have to get the pathfinding worked out first, but I’d like to see how many runs a train is going to be able to do in the allotted time (to help me decide if I should build tunnels/trestles/bridges). Or maybe the first and second phases could be combined? So you could program in your runs and see how they would do, then do more exploring/building and see the stats on them change. That’d be cool.

I’m not sold on the way techs work. I mean, you probably can’t give the player the ability to choose ANY tech they want, but… maybe do it SmallWorld style? Right now you can pay $1000 to skip one, maybe you could pay higher amounts to skip more. Oh, and please give the full description of the tech you’re skipping to! I can’t remember all that stuff!

Looking forward to see where you take this!

12

I played around with this for a bit.

First of all, congratulations for getting this far Nightgaunt. Being a developer myself (boring business stuff for the most part), I feel like getting from a vague idea in your brain to a at least somewhat presentable real thing is the first major obstacle - especially when it comes to games.
So getting there is already a major achievement unlocked for you. ;-)

As for the game itself in it’s current shape … ah well, you can kinda see how things are not perfectly thought out (yet) and rather buggy.
I agree with those that feel the exploration phase is kinda pointless. It’s basically luck-based busywork. It might have a place if you’d actually design it in a way like in your initial description of the game - Minesweeper. I.e., there ought to be a MUCH greater emphasis on the puzzle effect of finding stuff, but also more clues. In Minesweeper, you get those tiny numbers informing you how many mines are nearby. All the clues you are going to get here is the terrain itself - like following a mountain range can result in you finding gold. That’s kinda sub-optimal.

To me, it comes down to you having to decide what kind of game you want this to be. If it’s supposed to be more of a puzzle game, you should cut down the strategy portion, and vice versa.
For example, approached as a pure puzzle game, how about if during exploration, you could toggle the industry types, and like the number of mines in Minesweeper, it’d show you the distance to the next tile of that type. Clicking once on a cloud would uncover it, but clicking there again would lay track there - and this would be mandatory to uncover adjacent tiles. This combined track-building/exploration phase would be much more important and puzzly, no?
Please don’t read this as “I want you to implement it exactly this way!”, it’s just supposed to present you ONE idea, I’m sure you can come up with better ones. Ok? :-)

Can anybody confirm that building a station on a hill kinda breaks the game? I seem unable to route from there in the train phase - if I click on an adjacent tile, nothing happens, and if I click on the station itself, it is upgraded (I presume)?
Edit: Nope, I restarted the game and it works again. Something else must’ve broken track-building. I’m afrait I cannot give further details to help reproducing this.

Edit: Adding to my previous thoughts after playing some more:
Why not have the exploration phase completely seperate and have it cost TIME instead of money. So how long you explore determines how much time is left for the trains to run in the later phase?

Also, the RNG in this game is too much of a cruel master. You’re totally at it’s mercy, and a single game where nothing spawns within reasonable vincinity of the city can end your game, either immediately or after some more agonizing downward-sloping maps. Maybe you should get rid of the carryover of money for good. Just have players reach the mandatory lump-sum and anything more just gets them only a warm handshake. Cause scoring also makes no sense when at the mercy of a RNG to this degree.

Another idea to consider: Have a strategic “overworld” map where you can invest an amount of your own choosing in one region. You could have it have an impact on what stuff you can find there, but that’s purely optional.
This could allow for recovery from just a bad dice roll. But maybe it’s a bit too much, I dunno. It’s your game.

Also about the RNG: There should be something you could do if on a map there are only long routes. As it is, unless I’m missing something, this just makes everything harder and more expensive for the player with no way to get around this.
Essentially, this can prevent you from even in theory being able to win the map, I’d guess - but I’ve not gotten far enough to verify.

rezaf

13

I’m posting this before reading any replies.

Firstly: Were do you find the time to play the game club games, do a massive Let’s Play of a tactical tbs game and also make a prototype? My prototypes always get mothballed when life gets in the way :)

[ul]

[li] There was enough documentation to know what to do. Though I think you should start outright, on the first page, what the goal is. (To make more than 100,000).
[/li]
[li] Clouds feel pointless. I would just click spam until I found something, and then reveal a bit in that area. Perhaps reveal in larger blocks: 2x2,3x3,4x4 etc? As it is there was too much click-spam.
[/li]

[li] No undo: This was very annoying, especially when my exploration based click-spam placed unwanted bridges etc.
[/li]
[li] Infact there is too much “click and see”. I want to see then click. I want to see how much something costs before placing it, rather than the other way around. I can understand if this is meant to be a mobile game and you want everything to be driven from a context-sensitive click, but I’d prefer to either:
[/li]a) click, then the game says “want to do <expensive thing>”? (Possibly not popup for placing rails)
b) click on a tool first (e.g. place-rail, place-station, upgrade-tile, kill-forest, buy-rights etc) then click on a tile. This could also tell me the cost before doing it :) (This is how upgrading stations works…)

[li] I thought wood seemed kinda pointless. It just meant you had to chop down more trees (therefore converting cash into wood), or do a bit of exploring for more trees (therefore more cash into wood). The only effect wood had was that it limited overall tech, as there wasn’t a finite supply of it.
[/li]
[li] Skipping tech costing money is a bit cruel if the first tech is expensive and lame. :P But I guess there needs to be some incentive to not just continually click skip? Maybe have e.g. 20 techs in the game, but the player can only select 4 from a random set of 8 or something?
[/li]
[li] Counter to that: What use is the “cheap reveal” tech when I’ve revealed almost anything? I get that the techs are random, but that tech is either a curse or a boon, depending upon how much you’ve already clicked. the other techs don’t really have this, other than the rail laying one.
[/li]
[li] I can only see station values in the train-moving phase. Why not in the building phase?
[/li]
[li] I know you said there’s no routing back on yourself (yet?), but I found it more annoying that there’s no routing through the city. i.e. take a long route there via the factory, then go back a much shorter way.
[/li]
[li] I can only see station values in the train-moving phase when it’s too late. Why not in the building phase??
[/li]
[li] Have you though about a single train stopping at multiple stations, like it does with the factory?
[/li]
[li] Why can’t we place rails when routing? infact why can’t we choose and manipulate the routes before hitting go?
[/li]
[/ul]

Bugs/Problems:
[ol]
[li] I accidentally clicked retire on a train rather than the square next to it. That sucks. (No undo!)
[/li][li] Can’t go back from “start trains”. (No undo!)
[/li][li] You can continually click on a farm to spend 1500.
[/li][/ol]

If this were my game I’d have a bit of a re-think on the phases.

Currently you have:

[ol]
[li] Build phase:
[/li][ul]
[li] Can explore
[/li][li] Can place stations
[/li][li] Can lay track
[/li][li] Can make improvements
[/li][li] Can buy tech
[/li]
[li] Can’t route trains
[/li]
[li] Can’t see value of stations/routes
[/li][li] Can’t run simulation/get score.
[/li][/ul]

[li] Route phase:
[/li][ul]
[li] Can’t explore
[/li][li] Can’t place stations
[/li][li] Can’t lay track
[/li][li] Can’t make improvements
[/li][li] Can’t buy tech
[/li]
[li] Can route trains
[/li]
[li] Can’t see value of stations/routes
[/li][li] Can’t run simulation/get score.
[/li][/ul]

[li] Simulation phase phase:
[/li][ul]
[li] Can’t explore
[/li][li] Can’t place stations
[/li][li] Can’t lay track
[/li][li] Can’t make improvements
[/li][li] Can’t buy tech
[/li]
[li] Can’t route trains
[/li]
[li] Can see value of stations/routes
[/li][li] Can’t run simulation/get score.
[/li][/ul]

[/ol]

I would just either combine the route and build phases, and allow this new phase to see the value of the stations. Right now you simply have an enforced progression. The user has to blindly decide they’re “done” with a stage and then advance to the next. If a mistake is made (or they mistakenly press the advance button!) then they can’t go back!. I say blindly: A player COULD could sit there calculating everything, and that’s the OPTIMAL thing to do, but that’s tedious. And it’s bad design when the optimal thing is the most tedious!

If you want to keep the exploration but also add undo, then think about a separate phase where you JUST explore (and possibly have techs that are unique to that phase? Infact if you keep your current phases, think about possibly having each phase have some unique tech, to filter out the noes that are no longer re)

If you’re thinking to yourself “but that would make the game too easy!”, then the difficulty of your game is entirely reliant on the player not being a perfectionist accountant…

14

Since I was in playtest mode (I do a bit of development myself when time allows, which is practically never right now) I can give you an idea. Started station in a coal hill on far right edge of map, about the 3rd tile down. Picked up gold 2 left and 1 down. Crossed river right above city. Went to factory on far left, 3rd tile down. Now we break from the route. It was supposed to go 1 square down and then over to the city, but it instead went into the top corner.

Train pathing (rough map) I= river x= mountain h= hill F= factory C= city underlined is tracks

…I…x…hh
F…Ixxxxx
… x
….C

again it’s rough, but gives a rough approximation of how it was.

15

Ok a few more games, and I’ve finally, finally, gotten a grasp on how things work. Even had a few fairly successful games, with a peak income of 460k on one map. Part of the problem I had early was I thought I had to drive through a resource… which made gold really problematic (and one of my biggest barriers). Once I grokked the regional resource pull I did much better.

EDIT: Now after a few more games I pull 400k reliably. Even had a few rounds get to the 650k level. Learning optimal placement helped a ton.

Before I get any of the critiques, just know that I’m being a bit harsh. Try not to take this as in any way me disliking the design, once I figured it out it has some nice qualities. You’ve done good to get this far.

So as far as rounds go, right now there is very little connective tissue between rounds. Other than some small money carryover, and a higher need, rounds play identical. Having tech carry over would be one way I’d like to see it, but I’d also think it’d benefit from having multiple rounds on each map. Say 3 rounds, and each with more requirements, so that way it’d encourage building a network, rather than hoping to get lucky with resource placement. Right now things feel very disconnected.

Some of the features seem very underutilized. For example upgrading a station… I’ve done it, but it doesn’t feel like something important, or even viable. Ultimately it seems to be more valuable to get a second station, and the one or two rails to link to your current track. In rare situations it can make sense, but the cost/benefit just feels off.

EDIT: While upgrading a station is expensive, and hard to justify at times, I’ve been using it to great effect a few times. Got one map where 2 gold and 4 farms hit by one upgraded station, 4 tiles from the city. Was a very good round. Again it is highly map dependent, but now about 1/3 maps has upgrading be an optimal strategy.

The factory is almost something that needs more player involvement. As is in many maps it is better to ignore it. My best runs typically didn’t involve even finding the factory, and this just seems off. Again this ties in to the map exploration. As is the trade offs are rather luck based.

EDIT: The factory still feels under utilized. Again I’ve gotten very good at station placement, so probably about 8/10 maps I don’t use the factory, with about 6/10 I don’t even discover it. So often routing to the factory is both more costly in track, and more than doubles the route time. It’s a nice idea, but not one that I use. It is purely a bonus if it comes in to play.

The tech that adds another ore deposit? I really don’t get that one. I’ve bought it a few times, it isn’t really worth it, since odds are you’ll not find the added ore anyhow. Perhaps altering that to automatically reveal one ore square? Or if all are revealed, generate a new one. Better yet, have it automatically reveal any non farm resource, even in an area you’re not connected to.

Speaking of farms it doesn’t make much sense to have those hidden. Granted I get it from a gameplay having one resource always be visible changes things, but still it seems a bit silly.

As for retiring a train? Why is that option there. I don’t see any possible value to doing that.

Again I’m being tough, but overall there is a core here that has some potential.

EDIT: Some other unconnected thoughts. The curve for the game is very high. My first 8 rounds I was having a hard time getting to the 150k level. Now I get 400k plus almost every time. With that in mind I agree with you that the 200k isn’t too high. It was purely a matter of learning the systems. They weren’t quite intuitive at first.

After about 30 rounds I find coal to actually be the least valuable resource. That’s because it spawns as a single unit, like gold, but is less valuable than gold. Farms are worth more since they usually come in blocks of 6 or more (the map gen spawns blocks of 9, bit can be cut by edges, rivers, forest, etc.) As such farms are actually the most valuable, since they give the best return, even more than gold due to not having mountains to deal with. Coal kiddie corner to gold though? Hoo boy is that good stuff.

16

Thanks again, everyone! I love hearing how everyone engages with the game, even if it exposes a lot of flaws.

JoshL – The tech system is one that I’m almost certainly going to overhaul eventually. I want to keep it pretty simple, and I think not necessarily always getting what you want should still be part of the equation (something I want to happen more often is that you change your station or rail placement because of a tech that comes up… happens right now with the cash-for-wood one but not many others). One variation on the system would be to give you a set of maybe three techs at a time and you can buy only one. Some techs would be set to come up in the earlier sets and some in the later, based off when they’re useful (exploration discount late is useless). But each set would have more than three possibilities; some would just not appear for that level. Tell me what you think.

rezaf – Thanks for the kind words and the suggestions. One broad change I’ve been considerinng that is kinda along the lines of your “time instead of money” idea for exploring is just giving you a budget of turns and making everything cost a turn to do (maybe building a station goes in stages, so you have to use two or three turns). This would be more similar (for good and bad) to my model game of Oasis. I have always felt the use of a currency to make more of the same currency (while arguably kinda realistic) has weird effects on communicating your level of success. Plus you feel like “Why did you just take all that money I made away from me??” I like the solution I’ve come up with, with the dividend, but it’s still always felt awkward to me.

As for the RNG, it’s pretty dead simple right now, and I could do a lot to refine it and make sure levels are more full or there’s always some resource nearby. It’s true that the building of the level makes a very big difference to your outcome. I also need more techs that can mitigate a tough map, maybe (and the ability to get that tech more reliably).

Pod – Re: finding the time. You forgot to mention “raise four kids”! Which reminds me, I have to go pick them up from school right now (atypical–I usually am working a full time day job), so I’ll have to respond to yours and Craig’s thoughts a little later! Thanks!

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Pod – So to answer your question about time, I actually started building the game back at the beginning of the year and have worked on it off and on since then, a few hours here and a few hours there. I recently came back to it and gave it a UI overhaul (believe me, the previous version was TERRIBLE) and that’s when I thought I would share it more broadly. And, well, I haven’t kept up on this most recent Classic Game because of it. (Sorry, GregB!)

Thanks for all your analysis. The distinction between “click and see” and “see and click” is a tremendously valuable lens to look at the game through. I admit that much of the game I originally intended to make was premised on “click and see,” but I need to consider whether the downsides of that paradigm (less control and strategy, getting screwed by randomness) are truly hurting the game. My general philosophy (developed from playing lots of boardgames) is that more luck-based, adapt-as-I-go kinds of mechanics are appropriate for quicker and lighter games where I’m not super-invested and I’m happy to just curse my luck and start again. The extreme example is Minesweeper where you can just click somewhere on the first move and lose! Now, I actually think that’s pretty terrible no matter how light the game is, but clearly players tolerate it because the investment level is so low. I don’t want this game to be that low-investment, but I’m happy to keep it on the lower end. That’s not an excuse for anyplace where luck or blind play makes things unfun.

I think the reason there’s a split between the building and the routing phase is because ideally I did always picture the routing as happening automatically by the game (with only slight input by the player, if needed). The manual routing is mostly a concession to the limits of my coding skill. But it’s definitely worth considering if maybe the two can be combined.

The ability to undo is the kind of feature I think the game needs if it were ever to be released in some kind of professional way, but I think it’s way beyond my capabilities at the moment. The ability to switch back to a previous phase… that maybe is something I can do. Oh, and yes, the ease with which you can accidentally retire a train is supremely frustrating. Still happens to me quite often. I need a confirmation dialog or something.

I am going to take your suggestion and display the station value as soon as it’s placed. The bigger stuff, I’ll be ruminating on.

CraigM – After your caveat, I expected what you said to be a lot harsher! I think all of these are totally fair assessments. It’s true that upgrading a station is not something you’re going to do on every (or even most?) maps, and same with the factory. I could do more to tune the factory placement so it’s less likely to be in the middle of nowhere, probably. But sometimes it doesn’t make sense to connect to it. I dunno, as a player is that disappointing? One thing I really like, actually, is that it’s pretty rare to find the factory and you often either have to get lucky or get the “Reveal factory” tech.

Retiring a train is definitely not something you want to do. It’s just there for the situation where you end up with a station that is not connected to the city (because you ran out of money before you built the track). In a more automated routing system, the game would just recognize this situation and retire the train for you.

Thanks for playing, guys!

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Kind words are very much deserved and I’m glad you view my suggestions only as suggestions rather than as demands. I think of it as throwing ideas out there you might make something out of, maybe in a totally different way, or you might ignore - which is totally fine. Armchair design is waaaaay easier than actual design, I know that first-hand.
I had some more ideas but decided not do overdo the suggestion thing. ;-)

Btw., if I ever complain again about you slipping with the classic game club thread, remind me of your four kids and that I promised to shut up about it when you do, ok? :-)

rezaf

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Haha, thanks, rezaf. One of my goals with putting this game out there is to learn how to process playtest feedback and criticism. I’ve responded to some of the simpler suggestions and I have some bugs and little no-brainer improvements to make. But I haven’t had enough time to think through some of the deeper criticisms of the game and how (or if) to address them. I’m very grateful that anyone would spend the time dinking around with an unfinished game, though.

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Eight years later, I have still made a train game prototype!

I’ve poked and prodded at this game concept of mine off and on for all that time, with one pretty large overhaul happening about a year ago. After that, I had to test it (to see if the experiment worked) and then tie up the loose ends (which I just did this weekend).

I say I made a big overhaul, but to anyone who played it in 2014 and (miraculously) actually remembers it, you will find that the core concept hasn’t changed. (That means if you found, say, exploring tedious back then… your opinion probably won’t be much different.) What changed is the tech/worker system.

The game is now available on itch.io but only if I give you access to it! So, if you’d like to playtest the latest version of Rail Surveyor, send me a PM and I’ll give you a code to access it. You’ll need an itch account.

I’d love to get the kind of deep feedback you all shared last time. I know it may look like some criticisms were ignored, but I weighed it all very carefully with what I want the game to be, which is a light microstrategy management game. That doesn’t mean there aren’t many avenues for improvement still–maybe even rethinking.

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