|OT| STATIONflow (v1.0) - one million troops in a subway | Out of Early Access

[prudis]

DMM Games have announced metro station management game Stationflow, produced by Tak Fujii (Gal Metal, Ninety-Nine Nights II) will be leaving Steam Early Access.

Players must manage a 3D underground train station, making sure that commuters flow through, and have an enjoyable experience. Avoid congestion, and keep within your budget, and your budget will get bigger



Have you ever been stuck in a train or subway station, crowded and congested, fighting to get on the escalator? Have you ever wandered around lost, cursing the lack of proper signage? Have you ever thought to yourself “I could design this station better”?

STATIONflow is a game about controlling the flow of thousands of passengers by building and managing an efficient underground train station.

• Manage the flow of thousands of passengers with different needs, stats and targets, simulated in real time.
• Build complex 3D layouts in a multilayered map.
• Place and shape corridors and structures freely, without the constraints of a grid.
• Connect your station with stairs, escalators and elevators as efficiently as you can, but make sure everything is accessible.
• Keep things functional and efficient: your goal is to avoid congestion and to get passengers to where they want to go as quickly and smoothly as possible.
• Guide passengers via signage, and watch the flow of passengers change. Manipulate the path people take to avoid crowds—sometimes the shortest route is not the most efficient.
• Satisfy your passengers’ desires for various services: place vending machines and kiosks, construct bathrooms, restaurants and more. Passengers will expect more than just to find their exit on time.
• Don’t forget about upkeeps. You’re on a budget, so you'll want to keep your station lean and efficient⁠—but make sure it isn't at the cost of passenger satisfaction!
• And of course, the higher-ups are always watching. You will receive daily evaluations based on passenger feedback. Do well, and you will be rewarded with an extended budget and additional construction options, but also given increased responsibilities. Do poorly, and you may well be on your way to bankruptcy...
• Create your own maps and share them through the Steam Workshop, or browse other players' creations for your next playthrough.
• Adjust the game's difficulty to your liking via multiple settings. Give yourself a relaxed sandbox experience, or something to really test your station-building abilities⁠...

Good luck.

 

[prudis]

impresssions from Aaron D.

STATIONflow has completely captured my imagination of late. It's interesting in that I almost passed on it due to its spartan presentation. But happening on a Let's Play sold me pretty quick.

The game is a logistics sim focused on keeping commuters moving through an increasingly complex metrorail system. The game provides the station entrances & train platforms and your job is to connect them all up in a (hopefully) intelligent fashion so commuters can navigate the corridors with as little friction as possible.

You're given all manner of tools, most of which successively unlock after each successful daily operation shift. But beyond the raw basics of corridor/stairs/escalators, your most important tool is the direction sign. This is what your little AI travelers will be counting on to get them from A to B to C. Simple and Streamlined is the rule of the day. You place a sign, chose a direction for the arrow to point, and click on pre-made Point of Interest icons. "Platforms P and Q are THIS WAY"..."You can also access A and B Entrance/Exits in this same direction as well." Easy, right?

Well that becomes increasingly difficult as your operations grow more complex from day to day. New entrance clusters open up on the same map, usually in groups of 5 (A1, A2, A3, etc.). Most of the time on multiple floors. Make it through a few days and an entire new rail line will set up shop in the station. I just unlocked platform #3. Amenities are successively introduced. Bathrooms, coffee stands, food stalls, cafes, info booths. ALL of this needs to be telegraphed to passengers though the all-immortal directional signage. Hopefully placed smartly at all entrances and corridor terminates. It adds up to a LOT of direction mapping. Oh, and when you unlock a new platform, entrance cluster or amenity? Yeah, you need to update all your old signs.

Sounds daunting (it is) but it's also quick & intuitive. And this unearths the strange dichotomy of the game loop. You're spending a lot of time making Big Plans for corridor layouts and connections. Then you're tasked with fine-tuning & adjusting as you're asked to spin more plates. What sounds laborious on the surface also doubles as the Zen experience zone you'll likely slip into as well. Puzzling over guiding commuters through maze-like hallways and levels, keeping them locationally informed at all times. This actually puts you in their shoes navigating the complex station. Urging you to mentally walk the corridors yourself using spacial awareness to discover optimal paths (in both building and directing). It's an incredible feeling when you get that spark of inspiration resolving a route you thought was logistically impossible.

Then a new day brings new challenges by way of the unlocks noted above. It makes you completely reevaluate your station layout. Do you utterly slash & burn a subsection to accommodate new demands, or do you work around it and hope it's not too gangly in the end.

In my last session I just unlocked a new rail platform. Cool. But more interesting, I also go a new passenger type...Disabled. To service these customers I now have to integrate elevators into a sprawling 5-level underground station with 20 entrances spread across all floors and corners of the map.

Legit 1st reaction: ...Wut.

Legit followup: Okay, let's do this.

And ladies & gentlemen, that is the true magic of this game. The way it so naturally inspires creative thinking and problem solving.

Quick note on passengers and presentation. Like many genre titles, you can click on any random commuter and pull up a profile panel describing their unique archetype (daily commuter, tourist, elderly, student, etc.), their happiness, base stats (walk speed, vision distance, patience level, etc.), their entrance point & desired destination. You'll also see a dotted line on the map representing where they're looking & how far they can see. It's a real-time tool to show gaps in the system that you may not have considered. Upset commuters will rage with icon bubbles over their heads helping you further with layout diagnostics.

What's interesting about the raw nature of these graphics beyond clean readability is when you pull back the camera during am or pm rush hour and see hundreds of these little pegs just flitting & flowing through the map like some crazy-complex ant farm, the feeling of satisfaction of channeling chaos into order is just amazing. My current average is around 700 or so at any one time during rush hour. It's a small marvel to see the streams of people (hopefully) intelligently routing by the hundreds by your hand.

Easy recommendation for logistics, building & puzzle fans. I absolutely love it.

 

[prudis]