Subway Builder: A realistic subway simulation game

https://www.subwaybuilder.com/

by 0xbeefcab • 10 months ago

303 132 10 months ago

subwaybuilder.com

roscas• 10 months ago

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

sylens• 10 months ago

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

jeffbee• 10 months ago

That was my first reaction ... does it simulate having a federal executive that randomly cancels your funding? A nonzero chance that the local authority demands you cooperate with the "personal rapid transit" huckster?

em-bee2• 10 months ago

well it would be interesting to compare european and american cities wrt. population density and building costs. the claim is that american cities are not dense enough to be worth while. in a simulation you could set the parameters so that you can specifically look at the population density as a factor.

0xbeefcab4• 10 months ago

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

ivape2• 10 months ago

What tech did you go with here?

0xbeefcab4• 10 months ago

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

ivape2• 10 months ago

He looks like he had a lot of fun with that. 3D maps like Google Maps/Mapbox/Maplibre can more or less serve as your engine if you have a game in mind.

wiseowise• 10 months ago

(It’s pure TS/JS with Electron, in case you don’t have Twitter account)

codyklimdev• 10 months ago

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.

tantalor• 10 months ago

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

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

squeedles• 10 months ago

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

_vqpz• 10 months ago

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

pm2222• 10 months ago

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

etrautmann• 10 months ago

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.

andrewblossom• 10 months ago

You're not alone.

chasingthewind• 10 months ago

I am also bad at mini Metro but the thing that makes me crazy is that when the game ends it says something like “your city shut down.” That makes absolutely no sense and the endgame message should’ve been “you were fired!” Such a missed opportunity!

Y_Y• 10 months ago

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.

wlonkly• 10 months ago

I figure all the triangle stations must have well-connected bus routes going to the same area, and so on down the shapes. I mean surely you're not responsible for building an entire transit system!

KolibriFly5• 10 months ago

It's the kind of game you can lose hours to without realizing, even if it's more "transit-inspired" than a full-on sim

mdtrooper2• 10 months ago

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

bigyabai• 10 months ago

Mini Motorways is Platinum rated on Protondb, you should be able to play the Windows version on Linux just fine: https://www.protondb.com/app/1127500

bobbylarrybobby• 10 months ago

IMO, Mini Metro is the far better game. In Mini Metro it always feels like the congestion can be solved, it's never hopeless... in Motorways the congestion does really feel impossible to work around, and then you lose. Not sure if that's due to my lack of skill or the difference between rail (discrete, must connect stations) and roads (continuous, can be drawn anywhere on the map)

jstummbillig5• 10 months ago

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.

arh68• 10 months ago

Wow. AMA, you say? When do you prefer loops, or lines? Additional lines, or carriages? How much do you tear down at once? if you don't mind me asking

I'm like median on Metro, ~60 hours over years (though perhaps just the one hour, 60x, &c). Never too late to learn some strategy, I guess. Never played Motorways.

noduerme3• 10 months ago

Thanks! I've played the daily Mini Metro challenge for years and very rarely made it into the top 10%. I've gone through phases with widening loops, grids, etc. I always feel like there must be some mysterious "trick" I don't know. Questions:

1. How important is it to make sure you alternate symbols? (Beyond the obvious of not having 3 in a row). Do you go out of your way to avoid two in a row?

2. Is it better to put major junctions at the most common circle/triangle symbols, or on squares, or the rarer ones?

3. How much imortance do you place on the slowdown from lines crossing not at stations? I always go out of my way to avoid doing it but I wonder if I overrate the importance of it in my mind.

4. When you notice that some random station along a single line is getting a lot more traffic than other ones, do you shift other lines to cross it or just add more carriages?

One of the most frustrating (but addicting) things with the game is that a couple of my highest scores happened when I first started playing it, before I thought I knew any tricks at all! Wish I could see what the best players' maps end up looking like.

Oh yeah, one more question... do you play the secret level? What actually happens there, or is it just a gag?

clutchdude• 10 months ago

How do you balance the struggle to recognize your own greatness while also making time to engage with the little people?

Also, how much time would you say it's taken you to refine your skill to get to that 1%?

KolibriFly5• 10 months ago

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

rob74• 10 months ago

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.

kkapelon• 10 months ago

it's wildly unrealistic with the way you are able to just delete your existing "tracks" and construct completely new connections between your stations out of thin air

You can disable that in the settings.

PcChip• 10 months ago

no demo? just a link to pay $30?

AndrewHart• 10 months ago

There are plenty of demo videos on Twitter:

https://x.com/colin_d_m

rocketpastsix• 10 months ago

that doesn't help people who aren't on twitter.

chpwssn• 10 months ago

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

em-bee2• 9 months ago

just released here is another one by City Planner Plays, someone with professional experience in this area: https://youtu.be/YrIpaZQAkFg

gnarlouse2• 10 months ago

I was similarly unimpressed by this rollout strategy.

andbberger• 10 months ago

this is just worse NIMBY rails

0xbeefcab4• 10 months ago

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

richwater• 10 months ago

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..

shagie2• 10 months ago

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.

jezzamon• 10 months ago

This seems like a game with a niche audience, and I'm sure it'll be worth $30 to the right people

lock1• 10 months ago

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.

cptcobalt• 10 months ago

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.

KolibriFly5• 10 months ago

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

markus_zhang• 10 months ago

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

OK nvm my congratulations to the game designer!

gs17• 10 months ago

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.

all2• 10 months ago

Then you have to have dinner with an influential member of the city's planning committee and promise that the residential zoned real-estate that your company currently holds will be on offer to the committee before it is publicly offered. Also that you'll stay announcements of the new platform locations until they've bought the properties.

vgr-land• 10 months ago

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

mauvehaus• 10 months ago

Isn't the principal problem with the MBTA that it's been underfunded for decades and has a maintenance backlog of about a gazillion dollars? I realize it's getting better on the rolling stock front, but it sounds like the track is still a challenge despite some real efforts to address some of the problems.

I do kind of miss riding it though. For the last couple years I was living there, I got to ride the Ashmont-Mattapan trolleys as part of my commute. That was a treat. One of the last weeks before we moved to Vermont, my wife rode down to Ashmont with me and rode the trolley to Mattapan, then back to Ashmont to take the Red Line back to her office.

xp84• 10 months ago

You can already play that game, just put a static picture of the system map on your screen, then click all over the place and watch nothing improve

wyre• 10 months ago

This makes me realize simulations like this will be possible with AI at some point, and could be an interesting way for a city to hire employees

al_borland• 10 months ago

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

jjmarr• 10 months ago

OpenTTD has corruption and bribery.

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

KolibriFly5• 10 months ago

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

jasonephraim2• 10 months ago

Windows/Mac/Linux?

jasonephraim2• 10 months ago

Ahh I had to look on Reddit. Mac and Windows

saas_man• 10 months ago

and linux

xeetzer• 10 months ago

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

maxsich• 10 months ago

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

aizk• 10 months ago

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

Krasnol2• 10 months ago

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

awithrow• 10 months ago

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

noer2• 10 months ago

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

q_andrew• 10 months ago

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.

Etheryte2• 10 months ago

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.

burnhamup• 10 months ago

In practice it means Steam reviews the key requests you make for third party bundles and sales. If they decide the deal is too generous, they may deny the key requests until you've offered the game for a comparable price on Steam.

noer2• 10 months ago

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.

jsnell• 10 months ago

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.

guywithahat2• 10 months ago

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

ZekeSulastin• 10 months ago

It's mentioned as upcoming in the FAQ under "How much will it cost?": "$30 on subwaybuilder.com and $40 on Steam (page is coming soon). The Steam launch won't happen for a few months after the launch on subwaybuilder.com."

ivanjermakov• 10 months ago

Mindustry is paid on Steam but free on Itch.

Etheryte2• 10 months ago

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.

gnarlouse2• 10 months ago

Put it on steam please

aldonius• 10 months ago

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

artemonster• 10 months ago

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.

brewdad5• 10 months ago

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.

rsynnott2• 10 months ago

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.

9999000009992• 10 months ago

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

ReliantGuyZ• 10 months ago

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

mcdonje• 10 months ago

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.

9999000009992• 10 months ago

No reason they can't provide a way for users to add this.

I'll wait on the Steam release.

xboxnolifes• 10 months ago

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

brewdad5• 10 months ago

For $10 more. I get that Steam takes their pound of flesh but this feels shortsighted given how games are consumed these days.

I like the concept and am intrigued but at this price point I'll wait for reviews from people who have played it extensively.

rustystump• 10 months ago

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.

as1mov• 10 months ago

Ha I was going to mention Star Sector as an example of a great game that's not on Steam, but looks like you've already got that covered.

Highly recommended space sim for anyone else reading this!

roundRiver• 10 months ago

How about support for offline tiles? Portable and private.

https://www.openstreetmap.org/about

mjrpes• 10 months ago

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.

tobwen• 10 months ago

Warning: There are no sandwiches in this simulation :)

Mario970• 10 months ago

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

KolibriFly5• 10 months ago

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

sorenbs• 10 months ago

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

hatsuseno• 10 months ago

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.

fragmede• 10 months ago

Maybe they'll come out with expansion packs.

rsynnott2• 10 months ago

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?)

elijaht• 10 months ago

DC, Chicago both have good coverage (I lived in both without a car, although did need busses at times).

Boston and SF in my limited experience have somewhat usable networks but definitely a step below

rjh29• 10 months ago

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

Thunderwolf08• 10 months ago

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

wyan• 10 months ago

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 :)

Shin--• 10 months ago

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.

Krasnol2• 10 months ago

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.

gonzo41• 10 months ago

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.

blinding-streak• 10 months ago

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

fluoridation• 10 months ago

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.

jrochkind1• 10 months ago

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_2• 10 months ago

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

tetromino_2• 10 months ago

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.

Subway Builder: A realistic subway simulation game

Related Stories