The developer of Farlanders, Andriy Bychkovskyi, has revealed their next game with Super Loco World, a train building management and automation sim. With a soft casual style it looks quite inviting, but that definitely seems like it hides the complexities of it. For anyone who loves traffic management sims, railroad tycoon-styled games, this may be one for you.
Unlike some other games, the trains won't magically be able to turn around. So here, you really have the challenge of not only getting trains from station to station across a dynamic world, but you need to ensure they can actually get back the other way.
On top of that, there's a lot of management and automation at play here. You need to set all their speeds, manage the junctions, rail signals and much more. The developer mentioned how you're free to experiment with it as the game "encourages creativity and does not penalize you for rebuilding railroads or infrastructure".
As you build up your networks the world evolves with you with expanding villages that grow into small town and eventually bigger. Trains actually consume fuel here too, so you'll need stations for that, along with the money to keep it all ticking over. However, as a nice little accessibility feature, fuel cost can be turned off.
Each time is fresh too with the game world and resource distribution being randomly generated.
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The developer told me over email it will have full Native Linux support. Sounds like a nice one to keep an eye on. Looks really quite charming.
Follow it along on the Steam page.
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