A-Train: All Aboard! Tourism is as far as I can tell the latest in the A-Train transport management series coming out of Artdink. I bought it on a whim on the Steam sale because I've had my eye on "A-Train PC Classic" but then I saw that this one had characters designed by Yuji Himukai and 3D environments so I went for it instead.
I spent a decent amount of time as a teen dicking around in sandbox solo games of OpenTTD and I think this is probably very directly comparable to that game, but I can't really speak to specifics since I haven't booted OpenTTD up in decades. Still, it's a game essentially about building a rail and road infrastructure business and watching computer-controlled towns grow and flourish around that infrastructure. At its most basic it is extremely satisfying to plop down a train station at a tiny hamlet and watch it grow over the years. It's also extremely satisfying watching the seasons change - my screenshots here are only from summer and autumn but that's mostly because I think the autumn palettes are absolutely gorgeous in this game.
I did the two tutorial missions on Easy mode over today and yesterday and hoo boy does it get way more complicated than just "put choochoo down and watch it go :)" very quickly. At some point in the first mission I decided to start running two trains on the same track which involved having to manually calculate their timetables (there are no signals like in OpenTTD so the way you automate routes and ensure minimal stoppage is through timetable management). I really wish the UI was at least a little bit better for this - it's kind of impossible to compare the timings of two trains on-screen and it's a little hard to check stations' timetables. "Testing" routes without committing resources is also impossible, but I guess that's to be expected. I actually went bankrupt in the first tutorial (which has an extremely generous starting budget) because I kept pulling/replacing trains on routes to time them better and I failed to notice that doing that cost me millions of yen each time.
Speaking of yen good lord is the financial side of this game involved. The second tutorial introduces you to government subsidies, subsidiaries (which I was surprised to learn are different things), the stock market and IPOs... It's a lot! The detailed budget screens make me a little cross-eyed! Thankfully the tutorial is delivered through a very charming cast of Yuji Himukai-designed characters each with their own little personalities. Even the stern middle-age banker guy who introduces you to business loans ends up talking about how he camped an electronics store to get a SFC on release and then spent all night playing F-Zero. I don't know how much that characterization lasts outside of the tutorials, but tying game mechanics to these characterss has made it more fun for me to learn the extremely complicated financial mechanics of this game.
That's kind of my overall feeling on the entire game so far - the charm points really encourage me to power through and learn to deal with the things I find overwhelming, or sometimes cumbersome. I think the UI could be a lot better, and even things like laying down track are really clunky at times, but on the other hand you can customize the design of your buses down to the layout of their headlights and what kind of AC they have.
I'm excited to put in more time and engage with more of the mechanics (Easy mode omits mechanics like 'brand strength' or even vehicle deterioration, which means you don't have to build depots, which I think makes some aspects of route planning really unnatural in a way that gave me trouble) and provide more detailed insights into the game, but for now I just thought I'd post about my enthusiasm on here in case it catches anyone else looking to manage some trains.
PS: there are camera settings that let you "ride" your trains/buses! That last screenshot I posted is from a cab-over truck delivering fish from a local dock to an external metropolis :)
