Subway Builder: A realistic subway simulation game

[tantalor]

In this genre, Mini Metro is really fun, highly recommend.

https://dinopoloclub.com/games/mini-metro/

[jstummbillig]

The moment I have been waiting for: Top 1% player in all scenarios, both Mini Metro and Motorways. AMA.

No, they are both really fun (and highly addictive in my case). I like that you can do a scenario in 30-ish minutes (and even pause if you need to). I personally prefer Motorways over Metro, but alas, both highly recommended. Fantastic game design.

[etrautmann]

I like it but it always felt like there was an escalating kill screen that happens way too quickly. Either that or I'm bad at it.

[Y_Y]

I love Mini Metro, so chill, but challenging.

One catch is that riders only need to get a particular "shape" of station (roughly analogous to residential, commercial, industrial, stadium, etc). That is to say, they normally don't insist on going to a particular station. Also and it's free in time, money, and political captial to change routes. The model is, I feel, slightly too simple to feel like real transport infra. That doesn't stop it being hella fun though.

[squeedles]

Seconded. Big fan of network optimization rail games like the Empire Builder series, but Mini Metro is just simple fun!

[rob74]

I had fun with Mini Metro for a while, but in the long run it's a really frustrating game, because it always ends in failure - you start with a few stations and a few lines, but the game keeps throwing more and more passengers at you until you end up frantically trying to plug the holes in your network or "rewiring" it on the spot, and sooner or later everything inevitably blows up in your face. Plus of course it's wildly unrealistic with the way you are able to just delete your existing "tracks" and instantly construct completely new connections between your stations out of thin air, or just "teleport" trains/carriages from one line to another.

[_vqpz]

Mini Motorways is also really good if you like solving traffic problems

[pm2222]

This game got me hooked on a long-haul flight and it's so much fun.

[mdtrooper]

I love this game. And I have been waiting for the Mini Motorways for years...but for now it has not Linux version.

[KolibriFly]

Subway Builder seems like it's aiming for the opposite end of the spectrum

[tetromino_]

Paid, installed it on Linux and played for 5 minutes. Overall impression: game has potential but is early beta-quality at the moment, especially in UI. I will be waiting for updates to polish things up.

* Map tile rendering is laggy; edges of map are constantly unrendered when rotating the view.

* UI seems not very well thought-out, lots of modality for no good reason. Why do I need to turn off population density view before I can build a station?

* Controls non-intuitive - where exactly do I have to click to connect two stations with a track? (It somehow worked once, and I was unable to repeat it.)

* Undo / Ctrl-Z doesn't work (cannot undo deletion of tracks or station).

* Tutorial hints for some reason always point to a fixed coordinate on your screen rather than a location on the map, so if you zoom or pan, the hint for where to build will now point to a completely different map location. With no way to return to the original location. Is that intentional? Why?

* Can we get names of water bodies, major landmarks, major streets on the map? It would add a lot of character.

[hatsuseno]

I'll be entirely honest here, this kind of game is generally up my alley but I clicked off when I came across the list of available cities to build in being exclusively in the US. Not even a fictional playground for messing around in the engine, just "US primacy or bust", doesn't inspire confidence for a full release down the line. Not that I don't understand why it's like this, pulling the required real-world data is hard enough as it is, but it will limit the market I think.

[Thunderwolf08]

It's US focused because it uses US Census data to be very realistic and uses US open map data for the map. The dev tried to do Canada but couldn't get it working properly because Canadian census data is weird. I've heard someone from Germany managed to use some work arounds to get the game earlier than anyone else and modded in Berlin

[rsynnott]

> but I clicked off when I came across the list of available cities to build in being exclusively in the US.

Huh. I feel like the average US city would require a very different _sort_ of metro to the average European or East Asian city, if it even had the density to make it work at all. Like, more diversity in city types would make it a more interesting game.

Does any US city besides NYC even have a full subway network (vs one or two lines?)

[wyan]

This was my experience too, lots of cities to choose but all of them US-based. Not even London or Berlin. I'll wait and see :)

[rjh29]

Same. I'm not American and outside of NY I don't have a lot of interest in building subways there!

[fragmede]

Maybe they'll come out with expansion packs.

[markus_zhang]

Realistic? Does it contain corruption, bribery, backstabbing and other political stuffs?

OK nvm my congratulations to the game designer!

[jjmarr]

OpenTTD has corruption and bribery.

https://wiki.openttd.org/en/Manual/Local%20authority#bribe-t...

[vgr-land]

Well, I recognize this is a joke. I would enjoy having a simulation where you inherit and hold poorly maintained subway system like the Boston MBTA and have to bring it back to health with all the challenges these systems face

[gs17]

Yeah, I was expecting a gag game where you, e.g. try to build a subway but get told you don't have enough budget to do anything.

[al_borland]

This was my first thought when it stressed realism. Dealing with red tape, bureaucracy, zoning issues, opposition from citizens and local officials, etc.

[KolibriFly]

Even without the political chaos, modeling the physical and commuter-side complexity is already a huge win

[richwater]

The price point on steam is a little expensive for what (seems like?) might be an early access game by a single individual. Looks interesting though..

[lock1]

Yeah, I think it's way too expensive if you're not using USD. It's +70% more than the price of the current Factorio steam price in my local currency. And with 40$ for the steam release, it has to be higher than Factorio post-conversion (current Factorio USD price is 35$).

It's a hard sell for me, considering Factorio has a ton of actively developed mods (cough Space Exploration 0.7 cough), a demo, and in early access era it's cheaper and insanely polished.

From a quick glance, I'm not sure whether it's a fun game or not, as realism tends to be not fun. Requiring an internet connection for map tiles also sounds not good for offline play.

Well, I'll wait for reviews when it's out before deciding then.

[shagie]

At $30, I've got a lot of expectations. At $40, I've got a lot more. Neither of those price points are the impulse buy for "it might be a nice game that I could waste a few hours on." It's competing with things like Satisfactory and Factorio for promise of enduring in my library gaming.

This feels something closer to Puffin Planes ($12), Rail Route ($25), Station Flow ($18).

The difference between $25 and $30 isn't too much, but there's another significant hurdle to get up to a perceived $40 value.

It does look interesting, but for a purchase at that price point, I'm going to need to feel that its worth more than a weekend or two of gaming and something that will be a game that I want to pick up again after a month or two away from it.

[mjrpes]

Anyone know how big the bay area map is? Would be neat to build dream BART, including north bay and San Joaquin valley.

EDIT: Nevermind, purchased and answered my own question. Outer cities included going clockwise from north bay: Novato, Vallejo, Benicia, Brentwood, Livermore, Santa Teresa, Los Gatos, the full peninsula northward starting from Half Moon Bay. So a good amount, but missing some outer commuting areas like Santa Rosa, Fairfield, Tracy, Gilroy.

[aizk]

Colin is a friend of mine - a really wonderful self taught programmer. Subway builder gets a thumbs up from me.

[Krasnol]

Tell him that asking for 30/40$ without delivering even a single video is asking too much. Especially for such a minimalistic game.

[999900000999]

I like the idea.

But this is a very weird way to sell a game.

1st, we have Steam. That's where I and most people buy games. 30$ for a random exe is going to be really inconvenient.

Launch it on Steam at the same time, or at a minimum promise a key.

It's also not clear why it's just a bunch of American cities, if you're pulling the data from Google anyway, any city ( within reason) should work. If you need additional data, let users add it.

Maybe on steam I'll buy it

[mcdonje]

>why it's just a bunch of American cities

They said they pulled commuter data from the census and another source. They'd need to get a few datasets from other countries to pull it off that aren't in google maps.

[rustystump]

Perhaps my most favorite game is not on steam and sold as a sketchy exe/jar file. I say more power to sketchy .exe game devs and down with steam.

Now excuse me, my Pather friends called and there is a colony using ai which must be purged by Lud’s holy fire.

[ReliantGuyZ]

In the FAQ they explain that they use US federal data for the population simulation, including home and workplace locations, college student counts, and flight information from the FAA.

https://www.subwaybuilder.com/simulation

[xboxnolifes]

It will be on steam, says on at the bottom.

[cptcobalt]

I’ve been following this game on twitter, and I’m probably going to lose my entire weekend to playing it. We need more sweaty simulators like this—the genre doesn’t have enough entries.

[KolibriFly]

There's something incredibly satisfying about diving deep into systems that actually make you think and optimize

[q_andrew]

Note to the dev - FYI one of Steam's terms is that your game can't be sold cheaper somewhere else. Not sure if they enforce that though.

[jsnell]

Their terms are that you can't sell *Steam keys* for cheaper than the game is listed for on Steam.

There is a class-action lawsuit on this that's been ongoing for half a decade now, but as far as I can tell the plaintiffs have not been able to produce any actual contract text supporting this claim. The closest their filings come is some random customer support rep.

[Etheryte]

I wonder how the terms of that work exactly in practice. For example I'm pretty sure Humble Bundle includes games that are on Steam every now and then, with a pretty solid discount if you consider what you get for your money.

[ivanjermakov]

Mindustry is paid on Steam but free on Itch.

[noer]

Really? I've noticed a few games that are cheaper via apple's app store than they are from steam. It's not a big difference, usually ~$5.

[guywithahat]

Is there a steam version though? I don't see it on there

[Shin--]

I love these kind of games, but 40$ is incredibly expensive. I hope the price on Steam is at least region adjusted. As long as it is US cities I am out anyway.

[Krasnol]

My thought also.

RimWrld, a game with a small dev team but seemingly endless potential is $28.00 for the base game.

I can't imagine how this game could justify those $40.

[codyklimdev]

Saw a lot of buzz about this on Twitter, looks fun! I'm hoping there's some good mod support so I can add in my hometown.

[Mario970]

Are there NIMBYs protesting about the Character of the Neighborhood™? If not, it's not fully realistic.

[PcChip]

no demo? just a link to pay $30?

[chpwssn]

Not a demo necessarily but Miles In Transit - a delightfully nerdy public transit YouTuber - did a live stream playing the game early a couple of days ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3RrlV9YrS4

[gnarlouse]

I was similarly unimpressed by this rollout strategy.

[AndrewHart]

There are plenty of demo videos on Twitter:

https://x.com/colin_d_m

[roundRiver]

How about support for offline tiles? Portable and private.

https://www.openstreetmap.org/about

[roscas]

Looks nice but will it have other cities around the world?

[0xbeefcab]

I think the dev said maybe in the future, but currently (i think) all the population simulation stuff is tightly coupled with US Census data so this initial release doesn’t support international cities yet

[sylens]

The rest of the world actually funds and builds public transit, making a simulation of doing so less necessary

[artemonster]

please add "super hard mode in germany" - you want to build new station? fill out 120423423 forms, 10 years of waiting, 35 lawsuits from NIMBY retirees, 312 lawsuits from environment protection agency, and after thats passed you run out of money or baloon your initial budget 10x.

[rsynnott]

Pft. Dublin's first underground metro (you could maybe vaguely argue that the surface-level/elevated DART is a metro-alike; it fits into the same not-quite-commuter-rail category as an S-Bahn) just finally got its railway order (planning permission), 24 years after it was first proposed and 17 years after the first application (though the south surface portion will not be built, as it would have required the closure of like three level crossings of the existing tram line that it would have used, and enough people complained that they gave up). All going well, it will be done around 2035, but realistically there will probably be a judicial review or two which will knock it back to 2040. All this is assuming that there isn't another recession; if there is funding will of course immediately be withdrawn.

[brewdad]

Laughs in American. You can do all of that and one Karen who lives 300 miles from the project site and who has time to attend a 10am meeting on a random Tuesday gets the whole thing shut down.

[maxsich]

Was hoping this would be a sandwich art simulator:’)

[blinding-streak]

Is there a free demo? I might like this game, but I might not.

[fluoridation]

Yep. $30 is a big ask (especially for such a visually simple game), and the prospective customer has to decide if they're interested based off a threadbare list of features and 6 screenshots.

[ivape]

What tech did you go with here?

[0xbeefcab]

Not my game, but the creator https://x.com/colin_d_m?lang=en posted a lot of tweets with technical details, also his website I think has some info.

He had some pretty interesting methods for 3D building transparency and stuff like that

[jrochkind1]

Is this game actually ready, or is it a pre-purchase where you pay now and get it when it's done? The splash page seemed to be giving me mixed messages, but dearth of screenshots/video makes me think the latter? A bit sketchy to take people's money for a pre-pay for an unfinished game without being entirely clear that's what's happening? Or it obvious to gamers?

[tetromino_]

It's an actual purchase of what appears to be a rather rough beta version.

[gonzo41]

It would be great if they had a version of this where you had to progress through sampling soil, union negotiations, working with city planners, and then the actual digging with all the delays of machinery, strikes, planning issues, NIMBY's and such.

A great name for this game would be Hell.

[awithrow]

Is there a demo I'm missing or is this just a link to buy the game site unseen?

[noer]

I've seen a few youtube videos about it and the developer has been posting about it on his twitter for a few months: https://x.com/colin_d_m

[Etheryte]

This looks great, I hope you can include European capitals at some point. I've always wondered what the actual cost and layout would be in some of the cities I've lived in that don't have a subway.

[KolibriFly]

Like SimCity meets OpenTTD but with a laser focus on subway logistics

[tobwen]

Warning: There are no sandwiches in this simulation :)

[sorenbs]

I've had a lot of fun playing this the past weeks. And very happy to learn the game uses Prisma on the backend :-)

[jasonephraim]

Windows/Mac/Linux?

[xeetzer]

Yes: https://www.subwaybuilder.com/download

[jasonephraim]

Ahh I had to look on Reddit. Mac and Windows

[gnarlouse]

Put it on steam please

[aldonius]

It's coming to Steam in a few months, apparently.

[andbberger]

this is just worse NIMBY rails

[0xbeefcab]

Not too familiar with any games in this category, but I’ve been vaguely following development of this game on Twitter and one of the more interesting features is the passenger demand stuff is based off of current US census metrics about commuting methods, so I imagine this is probably better than NIMBY rails in that regard