Subway Builder

Honestly good game. Better game at 2 weeks from release on steam then NIMBY Rails was and that game turned out pretty good. Here is hoping this game will do the same.

I don't often review games but this game is unplayable. It's either flickering random coloured screens or its getting stuck on load screens. I cant actually review the game content because i couldn't even play the game. Requested my money back.

I have debated on whether I wanted to do a review or not. I have elected to, for several reasons. The first is what I believe to be unfair criticism of the game. The hard requirement to have an internet connection isn't preferred for me..but one that simply doesn't have any bearing. I always have my computer on and running, and connected to the internet. Having cloud saves is part of this. If this is a show stopper, fine..but I just can't see this being a problem for any more than a small minority of players. OK. Let me preface this review with the notion that I have been playing railroad and transportation games for a very, VERY long time. Like the original Sid Meier's Railroads, and all versions. Chris Sawyer's Locomotion. In fact, just about every transit game you can point to. Is this game the best one? No...NIMBY is my personal favorite, due to the complexity, and the vast gameworld. For Subway Builder, this game comes with about 36 cities. Several hundred more are available for download. I don't forsee needing to download any additional cities, as each one is quite a project. My training map, Nashville, took about ten hours, and I wasn't 10% done. My second map, Portland Oregon, is where I was born. Pretty fun to see areas I was familiar with. I may put a stop outside my old house! OK. The gameplay. That's why you came to read this review. Heavy and light metro, trams, and commuter rail. The ones you choose to use is a function of your cities' density. Each city is completely different. Sprawling, spread out cities may not have a dense urban core, so light rails might be preferred. A location like New York City might have a MASSIVE, heavy rail network, running a large number of cars, at a very short frequency. In real life, London has one rail line where they pull in and out every single minute. It is possible to do that with this game as well. The physical mechanics of this game are relatively straight forward. The tough part is at the start of the game, and developing a game plan. Some use actual data to see where to set up the lines, I see that as kinda defeating the spirit of the game. YOU need to see where YOU want to place stations and lines. Clearly, the BIG circles of both population and workers need to be carefully considered. Airports and universities, and the areas where the people commute from are a nice start. The mechanic of having different levels of stations and tracks is terrific. You can have a station at street level, and additional stations below it. If they're close enough, the overlapping stations can allow for direct transfers between lines. A heavy metro line can have light metro lines spreading out like a fish bone pattern. The three billion dollars you start with are critical. You need to CAREFULLY spend this initial budget, in order to fund additional lines. Nashville, my first city, I messed up and blasted through some buildings, and this ate up my money pretty hard, It took one FULL hour to save up enough monies to expand my lines. There is a tremendous amount of data for an old retired scientist like me. I love me a good spreadsheet! Specific information on ridership at each station, and detailed rider and financial data, broken down into hourly increments. You're also provided warnings if a train is over-crowded, and if a line needs more cars, or a higher frequency of visits. Given that one large city will take probably 20-30 hours to complete, I believe that I will get way more gameplay than the $30 the game costs. There is good value here, and better value if they made loading the modifications into the game a little easier. That's a mild complaint for me, and it gets a little fiddly. Stability is not a concern, and neither is lag. There have been some reports that this can be an issue, but also, more recent reports have suggested that the developers have taken some recent actions to enhance the optimization. I have a good system, and zero issues with CPU/GPU running excessively, or hot. I like this game. It is very satisfying to develop a chunk of line that immediately becomes productive. The game isn't terribly difficult, so long as you put stations and track down reasonably efficiently.

Good concept, however the game is not optimized well at all and stutters like crazy at all times. I've also encountered a really annoying bug where I can't select text boxes, whether its when I'm trying to name a line or even type a name for my save game. I'm hoping for fixes down the line, but I cannot recommend the game in its current state, for $40 nonetheless.

Don’t buy the game in its current state; it’s still far from complete, full of bugs and missing features. Only buy it if it’s 50 per cent off or more; it should cost no more than €15.

Negative - handling of critizism and communication (as others quoted) - performance issues (in my case it doesnt always run smoothly which is not to bad) - parts of it are vibe coded (that's really my biggest concern, although there are "real" develeopers in the team - contrary to what some people here suggest) Neutral: - lack of content: The game is still in active develeopment and has a mod manager so I'm cautious optimistic about that - need to be always online: I personally didnt have problems with that but I see why it's a problem Positive: - in its current stage it does make fun - it has some cool features nimby rails for example doesnt have - it is intuitive and doesnt need dozens of tutorials, building is also relatively fast - it has dozens of cities (Railyard) and an active Community, in the past the develeopment team listened to feedback and implemented requested features. Of course thats my personal opinion, so take it with a grain of salt. I do think this game has potential to be a really cool and fun game for its target group with enough content for everyone. So as long as it is actively develeoped I'm staying positive.

游戏是个好游戏，不管是从UI界面而是美术风格上都能体现出制作组的用心，但是，现有的游戏内容过于贫瘠,支撑不起原价145，折后108人民币的价格，假如你不是什么铁道迷之类的，不建议购买这款游戏，至少是现在。希望未来制作组添加更多的内容，像更多的城市,更丰富的游戏系统之类的，至少让游戏内容对得起一百多的售价

Seriously I dont care about this always online thing or that there are still bugs in the game. Those things for me are Understandeable even thought I get why some people are not happy about them, but creating a game like this and not taking height difference of the land into account is what completely breaks any immersion i could have had in the game. San Francisco flat as a pancake? Are you kidding me? Seriously thinking about refunding the game.