It’s a soundscape that surrounds completely. The soundscape is a gentle accompaniment of tones that chime as trains pass along and across the lines you draw. I’m always short one of these items and reaching the next milestone, which grants you a choice of one item, becomes a challenge of keeping an increasing number of plates spinning with the same number of sticks.Įven up to the point of collapse, Mini Metro is zen.
You are always short of resources, be it more lines, trains, tunnels, carriages or the powerful interchange. Much like the London Underground, Mini Metro is, in a sense, a survival horror game. It’s a game of adapting, expanding and commuting. Stations appear, often of a shape that forces a reconsideration of the design of the network. If a station becomes overcrowded the game fails. The objective is to design a working metro network by drawing lines between the geometric stations in order for the passengers (not shown in the gifs) to make their little geometric commutes. The gifs in this article show a timelapse of some of my games of Mini Metro. Mini Metro is simple and elegant and very, very good. If not any less painful on the human body. Don’t breathe in, don’t make eye contact, don’t emote.Įlegant isn’t it? I mention this only to say that I’ve thought often about how I enjoyed the little design journey I went on each time I got the tube back when I lived in London.Look at the map above the door for when to exit.Choose which of the two directions you are travelling on the line.Identify the colour of the line you are travelling.Subscribers get access to an exclusive podcast, members-only stories, and a special community. If you appreciate articles like this one, support us by becoming a Six Colors subscriber. Now if you’ll excuse me, it’s time for a new extension on the Blue Line. It’s definitely for me! You can get it for $5 on the App Store and Play Store. The list goes on.īased on my description, I think you probably already know if Mini Metro is for you. Don’t connect too many circles together, for instance-they’re commuter stations, and the people who arrive there want to go to squares and triangles, not other circles. You can appreciate it on a very simple level, but if you really get into it you’ll discover all sorts of layers of strategy. Mini metro reminds me a whole lot of SimCity, and in the best way. This is good, because I miss my cities once they’re gone and sometime you just want to watch the trains run and not stress out, you know? That option doesn’t exist yet on iOS, though Dinosaur Polo Club says they’ll add it in an update. Now, on the Steam version, once you lose the game you’re offered a chance to play in “endless” mode, where you can just keep building your transit lines as your city grows. You lose when a station gets too crowded-because you’ve failed in your job as a transit planner. But of course, the sound gets more complicated as the maps get complicated. It’s soothing, which is good because once the map gets complicated you can get pretty stressed out. But once you get the hang of it, the tactile interface is great fun.Īll the while, there’s an adorable, minimalist soundtrack playing in the background. You have to tap on a line and then hold on a station to disconnect the station from that line, and sometimes selecting the right line can be tricky. But there’s enough complexity here that it takes a little time to learn some of the most important gestures.
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The touch interface of iOS and Android seems perfect for this game-it’s just so easy to draw out transit lines with your fingers. You can see the little shapes riding around in the train cars-and see them get deposited at their destinations. The app simulates all of their commutes, and the game ends if one of your stations gets too crowded for too long. Your commuters are represented by shapes waiting at each station, indicating their destination. Oh, and all the while, the commute traffic in your simulated city increases. After every week of simulated commutes, you get more resources, like additional subway lines, more trains and train cars, and station upgrades. You set up the lines and equip them with trains. In Mini Metro, your job is to connect stations on a map-represented by circles, triangles, squares, and the occasional special shape (I like to imagine they represent things like hospitals, stadiums, and Superman’s Fortress of Solitude)-in an efficient way to keep people moving around your city.
And now it’s available for iOS and Android.
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And it is amazing.ĭeveloped by Dinosaur Polo Club and available as a $10 Mac/PC download on Steam since last fall, Mini Metro is a game inspired by the classic style of Harry Beck, creator of the famous London Underground map. “It just got ported to mobile this week and it’s great.” “Hey, have y’all played Mini Metro?” he asked.
Warning: This story has not been updated in several years and may contain out-of-date information.
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