Nice strategy game. I really liked switching two scales and writing of the game was also good. My only issue is that I had no clue I'm about to loose when being on the lower scale. Some countdown to show some station is getting overcrowder would help with that.
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Train Set GO!'s itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Overall | #48 | 4.314 | 4.314 |
| Enjoyment | #57 | 4.235 | 4.235 |
| Creativity | #84 | 4.382 | 4.382 |
| Style | #262 | 4.324 | 4.324 |
Ranked from 34 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
How does your game fit the theme?
We made a railway-builder where constructing a toy version affects a real-life version which is "Built to Scale".
Development Time
96 hours
(Optional) Please credit all assets you've used
Icons sourced from https://game-icons.net/
Music created in BandLab
Socafe font created by Khurasan
Comments
One of the first game jam submissions I played this year, and I'm just coming back to say it's still one of the best! Fantastically creative, polished art style, funny dialogue, etc. Great, great, great work. If I had to give feedback it would be I was trying to figure out what to do for about two minutes, so maybe a little more overtly pointing the player in the right direction (not the actual building per say, but rather how the two worlds interacted). Y'all should be proud.
Submitted
Customized Car ChaosAh that's fantastic to hear, thank-you so much! Thanks for the feedback, too, we certainly don't want anyone to be confused about what to do at the beginning. We'll look into improving the messaging there, and making it more clear how the two scales interact. Anyway, thank-you so much for playing and for leaving feedback: we very much appreciate it!
An amazing submission for a 4 day jam. Really nice vibes and a nice balance between working at different scales. Track placement feels a little weird but is not hard to get used to and I imagine it was more a result of the short time-frame.
As a small suggestion if you work on the game after the jam, some sort of warning that a station is are about to overflow whilst in the scaled down toy mode would go a really long way. You kind of get really chill playing with the toy tracks that you forget the urgency of linking everything up quickly at the larger scale of things.
Submitted
StarbuiltThank-you so much for playing, and for your feedback! Yeah, track placement is something we went back and forth on but tried to make the least-frustrating method that we could implement reasonably quickly.
And you're completely right about the warning in kid mode - the next thing I wanted to add was a tutorial from Lenny if the player was in toy mode if a station was becoming overcrowded, but we ran out of time in the end. We've already worked on improving this for the post-jam version, thanks for highlighting 😄
I'll need to come back to this one, as it was pretty neat, but the dialogue kept getting in the way of the UI.
Submitted
GMTK 2024 Jam Entry - Project AbyssOh no! Well that shouldn't be happening. We were a little pushed for space so the dialogues can cover the rail dock in the kid mode but the dialogue should only cover the unlockable track pieces which aren't available when you're going through the tutorial. Sounds like a bug if it was covering more than that, sorry about that. If you have a chance to come back to it, please can you take a screenshot so we can investigate for a post-jam update?
I love the idea! such a funny backstory. also, i love the little details like how the two music tracks have the same melody, making them blend into each other
Submitted
SizeboarderGreat art and the game was a solid entry overall. Picking the right track wasn't super intuitive because i wasn't always sure which spot I was placing on since the whole potential route was the same color. Having the overworld and model world was a neat concept though.
Submitted
Train WorldThank-you for the feedback! The building mechanic was something we experimented with throughout, and it went through a few iterations.
The first version was drag-and-drop, before we realised that would overcomplicate things when we didn't have loads of time (so we dropped it 😁).
The second version didn't have the 'rail dock' at the bottom of the screen, but instead each placement had its own little UI where you could place/switch piece/undo, but we found cycling through the different pieces to be more frustrating than just having them on dedicated controls.
The version that's in the game changed a bit when we switched up the scoring from "as a piece is placed" to "as a route is completed" - previously, only the current piece would appear as a ghost rail, but subsequently the whole route would appear ghostly as it hadn't been scored yet.
I think we could have communicated the spot you were placing (versus the rest of the route) a little better - maybe it could fade in and out? Or have a box around it to show current selection? There are a few options, but you're definitely right that it could be more clear.
Anyway, thanks so much for playing!
This is a fantastic entry. Great tutorialization, use of theme, character art, general tone. One of the most impressive GMTK submissions we've seen so far.
Submitted
Cool Game, Fun Game 6Thank-you so much for playing! The tutorials were one of the most important aspects for me to get in there (as without them the game is fairly incomprehensible), but we only got around to them on the final day of jamming so really had to rush to include them. Very glad to hear the mad dash at the end paid off!
This is a really creative concept, I love the idea! The execution is even better.. its extremely polished to play. I think the contrasting priorities between the two scales adds great depth to the game play. I really don’t have much else to say, great job!
Submitted
SketchometryIncredible take on the theme loved building my little tracks and swapping between the little and big mode. Super fun idea and really excellent execution
Submitted
Swedish Furniture BëhémöthIt was really funny how the game is all like "Haha cool train model, bro" and then you scale up to the real world and this guy just sits there in shambles about his weird and broken train networks :D
The music on the model is super happy and upbeat and then you zoom out and it's dark and scary and slow, it just works really well!
Submitted
Scale IssueIf you wanna check out my live reaction: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2231713974?t=02h32m57s
I had a lot of fun with it :D
This game is so cute and made me a bit nostalgic for when I used to play with my old train set as a kid. This is really fun, well done!
Submitted
Go Go Robo!This is such a creative concept! A lot of our initial ideas were also about using the same activity at two scales, but none were this creative. I love how the incentives are different and possibly contrasting between scales, which creates depth and complexity; while there's a single-directional flow of results from one to the other, which makes it simple to play with. The aesthetics of both scales are great too. Nicely done!
Submitted
Bryzt Goes HomeThank-you so much for breaking down exactly what we were going for, this was a really fantastic comment to receive
We’d have loved to increase the contrast between the goals even more, but you totally nailed it: we wanted all the things you care about in the kid scale (making curved tracks that veer close to obstacles) to be antithetical to the things you care about as an adult (an efficient railway system that gets passengers to destinations as quickly as possible).
So, so glad that landed for you. Thank you for playing, and we very much appreciate your thoughtful analysis!
A charming and cute game but was shocked there was a win condition! I expected to keep going for much longer with the limitations of 5 train lines and the ability to add new trains! I was so prepared to play this as an endless expansion survival, but thats just a testament to how fun this was!
Submitted
Call of the Cosmic WhaleThat was charming! The clashing aesthetics work well against each other; the minor-key industrial rendition of the nursery theme was a great touch. The mechanics are also competent.
The audio is a tad quiet. It hovers around -42 LUFS. It's not a big problem (it's better than being too loud), just something to keep in mind.
All-in-all, good work!
Submitted
SpatulaeThank-you so much for playing! And thanks for the feedback on the audio, completely agree. Last year we ended up with audio that was too loud so I think we over-corrected a bit for this time around. So an improvement I guess, but still not perfect.
Thanks again, will make sure to check the LUFS next time 😁
Nice, finally found another train game 😎
The gameplay wasn't very challenging and i guess the scaled up view didnt really add a lot to the game. I liked Terry though. Actually the style in general was very cute. :)
Submitted
Rail Scale
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