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Pancake2 years ago(+1)

Really liked this one! You really nailed the intensity of operating a railroad station, and having to do so much learning on the job of "X train is coming right now!" and also learning what all the different levers do made the game very tense. I'd guess that most of my notes you had a plan to include anyway, but I'll write 'em out nonetheless

  • I wish that turning around was bound to a button (like right click) instead of being a hidden button on the screen, it took me a good while to find out how to turn around (and, at least if you play like me, you're turning around pretty constantly)
  • It felt super unsatisfying to me every time I lost just because one train went too fast and collided with another, it feels like that should be on the train operators, not me -- they're the ones who're going at maximum speed right behind a slower train
  • You can open the pause menu on the lose screen, and if you then click "Resume", the game starts playing again with the lose screen open and you can get a rather funny looking end screen that reads:
    "You did it! Millions are dead!"
  • Anytime a train was named "X:XX Local" my instinct (when reading the train text quickly to ensure I read it before it disappeared) was that I should let that train go at that time on the clock (so the 6:43 Local made me think "oh, so I let that train go at 6:43 then")
  • It felt really strange to me while playing that I couldn't look forward at the tracks, especially because the pixelart shows that there are windows on that wall. I'd encourage you to either allow the player to look forward at the tracks or to remove those windows
  • Whenever two trains arrived simultaneously I had genuinely no clue which one was which. By the end of my play session I think I determined that the one with the mix of squares and capsules was mixed freight? But I'm not totally sure
  • Part of me feels that (at least in this easier first level) the rails at the very top and bottom give the player an out to not use any of the rails between the two main lines (once I got into the swing of things, I only ever used the first and last switch and the 2nd and 5th signals), though if the difficulty is going to ramp up from here then I could see potentially having to use those middle switches so you can keep 3 trains stopped at once
  • On the rail diagram, it took me a while to figure out what the difference is between a signal on top of the rail and a signal below the rail (and the first time I messed it up it felt a little frustrating)
  • I wish that there was more clear feedback for where/why each crash happened, instead of just a popup on the screen.
  • I'd like to have a notepad or something to use to write down the names of the trains I'm waiting on

In terms of positive stuff:

  • I really like the animation of the trains as they turn, it's just really satisfying to watch all the individual parts rotate (that train that's just made up of a bunch of boxes in particular is really nice to watch)
  • The sound design of the constantly ticking clock is on-point
  • Once I got the hang of it, the switches felt like they were laid out really logically (which makes sense, the signalbox itself isn't designed against you)
  • As someone who's not really a horror buff, honestly I'd really love to see a no-demon mode in the final game (though only if you've got time, of course)
  • The pixelart is very nice
  • It's fun to run a signalbox well!
Reply
Brickertown2 years ago

Thanks for the feedback! This is all really helpful because of how detailed you are with the points. I can answer a lot of your suggestions:

  • I originally considered mapping turning around to right-click, but wondered if not having a button made it less obvious. That being said I'll definitely implement right-click turnaround, and probably provide a menu option for de/activating the UI buttons.
  • I also noticed the express trains could hit the backs of freight / locals since they're faster. I'll either slow them down in general, or make them go slower if there's a train right in front of them.
  • The pause menu thing is a bug lol
  • I can probably rename the locals to something like "the 8 o' clock local", but the issue should also be easier to avoid in the final game because there'll be an analog clock instead that starts at 11:50.
  • Real signal boxes do allow you to look at the tracks out the window. I don't know how feasible it would be to implement and still keep the one-click turnaround option, but I'll look into it!
  • I've made new 3D models for the different trains, so telling freight from passenger trains should be easier. But if two trains arrive of the same type (i.e. two local passengers), they can only be told apart by their direction. This is sort of on purpose, since I actually do want to make the players pay really close attention to the train announcements (which will be done over the phone in the final version).
  • I will eventually make player to pass two trains in the same direction at once, i.e. stopping one train, then stopping another, both requiring a third to go by before they can go. I might even make then stop a fourth train in the other direction if I'm feeling evil >:)
  • I wanted to implement the signals on the rail diagram as arrows, but ran out of pixels lol. Redrawing it should be easy though.
  • The crash popup screen was ABSOLUTELY added last-minute (as was the entire scoring system, or any of the screens at all). Telling where it happened should be easy, given each piece of track has its own ID of sorts.
  • As for an in-game notepad - I'd had an idea for an in-game log for departing trains, but that idea is actually really cool, letting the player type whatever they want onto a pad for note-keeping. I like it!

Also, thanks for the positive notes! I'm having a ton of fun making this game and every piece of feedback is great!

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