6/30/2023 0 Comments Mini motorways metacritic![]() ![]() And optimization with multiple factors is always a balancing act - you can only truly optimize one thing at a time, and our goal in this game is to make sure that the "longest road" (the longest distance any one car will have to make to reach a corresponding destination) is as short as possible. Keep in mind that this does NOT apply in every situation - The more houses you have, the more competing goals you will have in the name of optimization. Firstly, your cars will drive shorter distances on average, and you will also end up using fewer tiles for longer distances, rather than stairstepping everything. ![]() This is one of the easiest ways to step up your game, and the benefits are twofold. It might be tempting to just draw a road to the left, like this:īut the more optimal way would be diagonally, which shaves off a fraction of a second for any car pulling in: Optimizing Road TilesPretend I have to connect this light blue store to some houses that are coming in from the south. Some stores that appear may have two buildings in them (keep in mind, you can direct traffic THROUGH these! can come in handy, but don't divert a huge amount of traffic through them or the cars can't service them!).įurthermore, if you're coming from Mini Metro, you might distress when a few houses are formed way out toward the edge of your map - this is okay! Houses are just "car generation resources" and can't cause you to lose - it just means you might need shorter roads to the other houses of that color and their destinations to pick up the slack. You'll notice that, save for challenge criteria, some "square" buildings might be upgraded to "circles". ![]() It should be noted that there are several different types of buildings, each with a different "pin generation rate", so to speak. Imagine Cities: Skylines condensed to its most basic road-related challenges, except it's based in real-life. If you let that timer build all the way up, it's game over! Mini Motorways is the deceptively manic traffic management minigame of my dreams. If too many build up in a particular building, a timer begins, accompanied with a "ticking" sound. Pins are located at "destinations" (stores and other buildings). They are happy when they can travel to a pin and go home. Decide where to use your limited resources. As new stations open, redraw your lines to keep them efficient. Draw lines between stations and start your trains running. That's why I've chosen it as my personal pick.Cars are fairly self-explanatory. Mini Metro is a strategy simulation game about designing a subway map for a growing city. Now all I have to do is figure out how to apply my newfound skill set to big-boy city builder games, and I'm onto a winner.ĭespite being the weirdly educational game it is, Mini Motorways is the most thrilling traffic manager I've ever played. ![]() "Just one more 10 minute challenge," she says, three hours in, sporting a bloodshot gaze.įor me, Mini Motorways has turned into a safe (and fast-loading) Cities: Skylines practice arena, and my go-to lunch break pastime. I also feel empowered to get up and start again when I fail-thanks to every playthrough ending abruptly, in utter bedlam, I always find myself raring to chip away at the problem again it's not like each game is very long anyway. I feel genuinely challenged in my ability to anticipate bottlenecks and plan ahead, and to use limited resources to solve really tricky spatial problems under pressure. It's like Mini Motorways is actually teaching me important life skills or something, which I was not expecting from a traffic sim. and that evil timer ticks ever-faster.Īs frantic and stressed as this game makes me, it also makes me feel accomplished. One wrong decision, and you either have to deal with intersections akin to that of the infamous Hanoi, or send your poor commuters on an hour-long diversion through the wilderness-sure, you can rip up the roads and re-lay them more efficiently, but they have to be clear first. Outsmarting it feels great, but slip up and your playthrough is entirely crippled. It's a game that truly tests you, requiring deep levels of planning, resourcefulness, and no small amount of clairvoyance. This game has honestly given me a profound respect for people who manage traffic flow for a living. for when you're inevitably losing sleep over the unfathomable routes it tasks you with unravelling. Your choice of a roundabout over a traffic light, bypass or bridge can be the difference between order and absolute mayhem. Without warning, it plonks a building somewhere utterly inaccessible, and now your perfectly considered routes need a rehash-but it all hangs on which feature you rolled the dice on during the last interlude. But as your city gradually grows from a sparse cluster of homes and businesses into a raging metropolis, prepare to have your brain muscles worked to their problem-solving limits. ![]()
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