Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD59 → Junction Keeper
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 213 | 3.20 | 29 | |
| Fun | 185 | 3.14 | 29 | |
| Innovation | 198 | 3.09 | 29 | |
| Theme | 145 | 3.70 | 29 | |
| Graphics | 220 | 3.09 | 29 | |
| Audio | 162 | 3.17 | 28 | |
| Humor | 96 | 2.91 | 25 | |
| Mood | 204 | 3.10 | 25 |
Cute game. I wish I could set signals per track, so I can give one train the go while stopping another, at the same junction. I think the first level could have been way simpler (less junctions) to get a feel of the controls. Loved the time control, really neat way of giving the player a chance to set the mood or difficulty level they want.
@lanatra Thank you for the kind words :) I had planned to make the level maps different (should not have taken long), but ran out of time at the end! The time control was initially a debug mode - but players usually love those so I just left it in :)
love vibe of this small train town đźš‚đź’š
It's really funny to see another version of his idea; I made almost the same game. Well done!
Lovely game! Would be nice if there was a button to slow the trains immediately to 1x speed or in larger increments for those of us who like to speed to the station, then realize they're going way too fast for the next stop.
Super solid game.
@tasakasama And here I thought I was being very original :D I did mean to make a train game for a while - it seems like there are a couple train entries this LD :) Will check yours tonight!
@lexu Thank you for playing and the feedback! You are right, the speed meter actually controls the train max speed and acceleration, not the simulation speed, so what you described can happen (though I didn't think about it at all tbh). Honestly I kinda like it as emergent difficulty - though it would likely pair well with a "lower your speed" type of placeable track signal :thumbsup:
Really fun little rail‑management puzzle! Juggling STOP/REVERSE signals gets tense fast, especially with the quicker trains. A simpler first level would help ease players in, but the core idea is solid and satisfying. Well done!
Cute game - and good use of the theme :thumbsup_tone1: I struggled a little with figuring out how the signals worked.... but that was a minor thing :smile:
Let you a rating
@purpledartfrog you know, you're on to something - I was crunching so hard to release something reasonable that it didn't even cross my mind to add a little tutorial text mentioning these signals :laughing:
I'll call it "emergent difficulty" :D
This is a fantastic design! I actually toyed with a similar idea involving traffic lights and flow at the start of the jam, but I ended up scrapping it because the logic seemed way too complex to finish in 48 hours. Seeing your take on railway scheduling is super cool!
The UI and art style are really clean, and the audio/BGM is a huge plus—it really ties the whole atmosphere together.
A couple of minor suggestions: The difficulty spike from Level 2 to 3 felt a bit steep. Also, I found it a bit tedious to constantly hover over trains to check their routes. It might be much smoother if the paths were permanently visible or could be toggled on.
Overall, a really solid entry that fits the theme perfectly. Great job!
It's a lot of fun. I also liked that we could play at our own speed. However, the sounds should have been a bit more varied, and we shouldn't have to hold the cursor directly above the train to see its path. This way, we can't see the track even when the train moves slightly.
@moyuowo Thank you for checking it out and glad you like it :) I had been meaning to make a train game recently, and the theme seemed to fit well. Thank you for the suggestion - I agree in the final level there's a difficulty jump sometimes depending on how unlucky you get with new train spawning and chosen routes (something I partially coded in to avoid but there seems to be a problem). Maybe a slowdown signal or signal to recalculate route upon blockage could help here if I were to expand the game further :) The destination hover I thought about revealing always but I think the game then loses a certain frantic gameplay element - maybe a fade out would help so it stays on screen a bit longer.
@floonace Thanks for the feedback! I don't usually make mouse controlled games, so your tip about a bigger hover hitbox is very useful :)
Hey, this is basically the same concept that I had in mind for my game (I'm surprised not more people interpreted signals as train signal!) - so very interesting and well executed! I liked your graphics, story bits and especially the music getting faster as you fast-forwarded. As for game play, I think it works generally, but overall it felt a bit overwhelming and to me it seemed to depend a lot on luck whether you're doing alright or not. In fact, I was able to pass the first two levels without even setting any signal :D Overall, very nice entry!
Really fun game! It's so cool that the background music actually changes based on my speed!
I like the take on the theme. Simple controls but the behaviour can get quite complex.
Yay, a fellow train game. Neat idea, it was a fun challenge, though randomness played a large part. I beat the second level without having to do anything at all. Also the the red blocks seemed to no longer work when I got to the third level.
The reverse blocks confused me, Surely the train has a specific destination and going backwards doesn't help with that, plus if they can go backwards it is no longer clear where they are supposed to be going. I ended up not using them other than by accident due to the three way toggle.
The concept is great. The time acceleration also made things quite funny (and chaotic). Many rail managers were disappointed by infrastructure catastrophes. I think it was a little hard to control at times when a fast train takes a long time to slow down and causes an accident, plus generally knowing which trains will/won't collide with each other (feels like there is some randomness/hard to anticipate how to plan things), but overall it is a nice premise and I enjoyed the slapstick nature of things invariably going sideways when trying to speed up time and juggle lots of trains lol. Thanks for sharing your game!
Pretty cool little game! Though the management of all the trains gets hectic quite fast. In fact too hectic for me to complete level 3. Several times I restarted for it to just spawn two trains on stations right next to each other, going towards each other and crashing within seconds. When I managed to live a bit longer, I seem to not judge correctly how far away I need to place the signal for trains to be able to slow down and stop, so quite often they just run the red light.
Graphically, it looks pretty good! Watching those little trains move around feels pretty satisfying, and the chill music in the background makes it even better.
This is probably my best score from the final level. Looks like I am slowly getting better at it! ;)
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@zettelkasten Imagine being promoted to Senior Rail Signalling Engineer without ever having set a signal in your life before :D Recipe for disaster. The train spawning logic (which is not completely random) has some leniency built-in, part of which seems to not work - I agree it could definitely be a bit more consistent in difficulty and needs some work. Likely this could also be tuned better simply by increasing/decreasing the map complexity.
Thank you for playing!
@someone I had originally envisioned this game without reverse signals (real trains can usually actually reverse by the way), until I realised that sometimes trains went too far and could not be kept from crashing anymore when facing head-on on the same section. Fixing that problem was a gameplay necessity in my opinion, and you likely could fix it either with a siding rail to get out of the way (which I felt a bit complex to implement at the time), or a reverse signal. I ended up having difficulty implementing the reverse signal too, so I likely could actually have done something different. After the jam I was thinking maybe a "recalculate-path-to-destination" signal (taking into account any set path blockages) could have been an alternative. Alas, reverse is in now and mostly does the job~
I agree I could have been clearer when reversing what the actual train's destination was :)
Thank you for playing!
@auxiliarymoose I myself may be a bit too silly but hearing the trains crashing made me giggle uncontrollably :laughing: At higher speeds, multiple consecutive block signals are required to stop a speeding train, which I agree is not very intuitive :) Found it a bit hard to tune the balance of it, will work on it!
@lcstark Thank you for the feedback!
You're not the only one finding the difficulty not consistent through runs - I realised after the jam that level 3 does feel a little grindy with the imposed hard cut-off of no collisions (was running out of time by the time I was implementing level differences :'). The train spawn logic and target station picking logic could definitely use some work to become more lenient, I agree!
Glad you liked the music, this was me sitting down and jamming literally for a minute at the keyboard :D
Why are all these train games so nerve-wracking?
@blubberquark Probably because we don't wanna make headlines in your local newspaper having caused the latest disastrous train wreckage :-)
As someone who has hundreds of hours in Factorio building trains it was a lot of fun directing them around.
I had two issues with the randomness, once on lvl3 I got up to 300+ points without having to do anything because the trains just behaved nicely. Then I got a train spawn in a 1 way road 2 blocks away from a train coming to that station and I just lost. Other then that pretty fun ride :smile:
I didn't learn how to play this game from the first level, as upon being thrown in, I did nothing and beat the level without any penalty. The second level was a reality check when I lost in the first half minute or so. There's something about the music combined with this scratchy echo-ey noise that's making me feel like I'm lucid dreaming.
@freamdev Thank you for playing! Will try to make the train spawning and routing more consistent :)
@poshdan The music and harmonica sound effects were subjected to a pretty heavy reverb effect like you're in some kind of huge watery cave, so that's probably part of the effect you're describing :-)
I like that in the first level you are already given 2 trains, so it is basically forcing players to learn to change signals, then in later levels a time limit and even banning crashing altogether to increase the challenge. However, that is also why I think maps that increase in complexity would have been really nice, since from the first level you are already given a complex map, which may hinder players' learning of the game mechanics.
I suggest allowing players to check on a train's itinerary and change signals when paused. Even at the lowest game speed I keep failing to stop trains from crashing if they start near each other, especially in the lower right area of the map.
@creeperxd Thank you for the kind feedback! I wish I would have had time to add map variation :-)
I don't like pause as a game exploration feature - but I think some more lenient train spawning logic and potentially some downtime for a newly spawned train would potentially alleviate your very valid concern.