And again...
Mini Metro (Dinosaur Polo Club/Valve (basically), 2015)
Mini Metro is one of the best "lite" games I've ever played, and also one of the best puzzle games I've ever played (related categories, to be sure). It's about building an urban rail network, as you might guess from the name.
The basic concept is something like this: You begin in an open expanse of white land, interrupted only by a river system defining the geometry of whichever city you're supposed to be in (many of the world's major urban centres have their own levels). Onto this white space a geometric shape will generate itself, spawning as it does so a number of smaller geometric shapes. The large ones are stations and the small ones are passengers. Passengers wish to go to a station of the same shape they are (at which point they disappear); as the game goes on the number of different shapes will increase. Stations have a maximum number of passengers they can hold; if you go over this limit the game is over. To deal with all of these passengers you create railway lines; you start out with a fixed number of lines and trains, and after you survive for long enough, (in game terms, a week) you get a bonus - an extra line, an extra train, an extra bridge or tunnel so you can cross the river more often, an extra carriage so your train can carry more people, etc etc. The game contains various cities with different geometries and slightly different rules - in Japan you'll get a couple of fast shinkansen (bullet train, but railway enthusiasts almost universally use the Japanese name for it, something which I'm sure must amuse Japanese speakers quite frequently given that various minor mispronunciations can completely change the meaning...) for example, or in Cairo carriages take four passengers rather than six. Lines are endlessly reconfigurable, unlike the real world (thankfully); the interface is wonderfully intuitive (it's just click and drag mostly), and in general nothing gets in the way of you playing the game the way you want to.
That's pretty much it as far as rules go, and like most of these things it's not "winnable" as such - stations and passengers will spawn until one overcrowds. The game does give you targets for each city (of which there's roughly 20, if memory serves), and then there's a weekly challenge as well.
Basically it's a great casual game to play for five minutes, though like most of those it does have the downside that you might accidentally play it for three hours instead.
This entry was originally posted at https://ilanin.dreamwidth.org/9027.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
Mini Metro is one of the best "lite" games I've ever played, and also one of the best puzzle games I've ever played (related categories, to be sure). It's about building an urban rail network, as you might guess from the name.
The basic concept is something like this: You begin in an open expanse of white land, interrupted only by a river system defining the geometry of whichever city you're supposed to be in (many of the world's major urban centres have their own levels). Onto this white space a geometric shape will generate itself, spawning as it does so a number of smaller geometric shapes. The large ones are stations and the small ones are passengers. Passengers wish to go to a station of the same shape they are (at which point they disappear); as the game goes on the number of different shapes will increase. Stations have a maximum number of passengers they can hold; if you go over this limit the game is over. To deal with all of these passengers you create railway lines; you start out with a fixed number of lines and trains, and after you survive for long enough, (in game terms, a week) you get a bonus - an extra line, an extra train, an extra bridge or tunnel so you can cross the river more often, an extra carriage so your train can carry more people, etc etc. The game contains various cities with different geometries and slightly different rules - in Japan you'll get a couple of fast shinkansen (bullet train, but railway enthusiasts almost universally use the Japanese name for it, something which I'm sure must amuse Japanese speakers quite frequently given that various minor mispronunciations can completely change the meaning...) for example, or in Cairo carriages take four passengers rather than six. Lines are endlessly reconfigurable, unlike the real world (thankfully); the interface is wonderfully intuitive (it's just click and drag mostly), and in general nothing gets in the way of you playing the game the way you want to.
That's pretty much it as far as rules go, and like most of these things it's not "winnable" as such - stations and passengers will spawn until one overcrowds. The game does give you targets for each city (of which there's roughly 20, if memory serves), and then there's a weekly challenge as well.
Basically it's a great casual game to play for five minutes, though like most of those it does have the downside that you might accidentally play it for three hours instead.
This entry was originally posted at https://ilanin.dreamwidth.org/9027.html. Please comment there using OpenID.