Hello! As I said on stream, I really love the idea of a train roguelike, so that's why I find very unfortunate the very harsh and impossible balancing of the game. I would be really eager to see how the game can evolve to offer an experience where there is more space for player agency and significant choices.

If you want to check it out again, here's the VOD: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2534538388

A really creative concept, had a lot of fun, altough it felt a bit unbalanced at times, other than that an enjoyable experience!

Cool game that requires a bit of balancing. I hit day 3 with a requirement impossible to meet. Other that that it’s a nice experience. I’d love to see an even better building UX. Congrats

Really creative concept for a roguelite game - I love twists on genres like these that are gameplay styles you wouldn't expect! The theming of the game was on point, I loved the main menu, the iconography throughout the game, and the upgrade menu selection, those were all nice touches. I thought your artwork, animation, and sound design were really great here. The gameplay was interesting and kind of relaxing to do, and I think on a technical level a track designer system like this is pretty impressive. I think I echo everyone else's sentiments in this comment section when I say that the game could use some balance tweaks - I found that the number of passengers required scaled up really quickly, which made some rounds mathematically impossible as soon as you started. I think that's an underappreciated problem with the gameplay, as I think the best roguelites give you a chance to succeed even with no upgrades if you're skilled enough, whereas with this game, if you've chosen the wrong set of upgrades, at some point it's over before it begins. I think beyond balancing the game, some tweak to the core gameplay loop that would allow the player to succeed at any round with the right choices, the right skills, and the right luck would really make this game fun to play no matter the round. Overall, a very creative idea for the genre, with a really fun and relaxing game loop and some great theming - with some more work to the gameplay and balancing, this could be a really creative, slower paced take on roguelites that stands out, and I'd like to see it expanded upon in the future!

Very fun!! I think it only needs some balancing. In one run i fount the third level impossible. In another i had 10x the quote for every single level since then.

It took me a while to realize i could move the screen lol.

The sounds are very good and satisfying. The game design has a "see number goes up" thing that i love.

The upgrades seem fun, i specially like the ones with drawbacks (chance of losing half the people for example). The mechanic of having a long vs short track depending on the upgrades is very interesting, and could lead to some cool builds in the future.

Really good entry!!

Yo great game man, I  really enjoyed the brain teasers, really polished, theres only 2 things I would have changed either aclculate a path that is not impossible to win or create pre buildt paths thats winable, ther other thing is simplicity, you could have removed one of the build/remove buttons by assigning them both to the right and left clicks on the mouse.

Very simple changes that can easily make the game so much more fun, although it is already one of the most fun games of the jam

You have gotten a ton of really good feedback already, I can only +1 it. I think this can become a seriously addicting game if you decide to take it further. Looking forward to playing with the updates!

ok so, I was quite confused on my first playthrough of the game. There was a station right by the clouds, and it was pointed in the direction where it connected to the blocked part of the cloud. And I was like: what? So I restarted. And yea, basically like many others mentioned, there were possibilities of illegal stations. And stuff like this happened too, which is avoidable through a slight detour, but it didn't feel that nice...

Next, route connections felt kinda weird too. Like in the scenario that I just showed, players would want to connect to the bottom one, but are forced to connect to the side. With how the routes are placed using only a click though, I do get that it is like impossible to guess the intentions of the player, so maybe the routes connection system should be reworked so that players get to specify it? Also on a side note, I somehow managed to destroy whatever was in the clouds in this specific scenario... didn't really happen again so idk what happened there lol.

Anyway, routes aside, I wanna talk about the upgrades, which again like some already mentioned, had duplicates... And most of the upgrades were pretty weak imo, which brings me to balance: The game's difficulty scaled far too quickly. Most upgrades just weren't enough to keep up, making the game length limited to around only 5 rides most of the time. I say most of the time because like others have mentioned (everything i wanna say is mentioned already loll) the overpowered hype train exists. Only with that power up does the game balance feel better... But well, this upgrade doesn't appear that often, at least from my experience.

Next, there's a few more minor nitpicks which I'll quickly go through: the passengers counter of the main station is kinda slow when lots of people are transferred. The camera is not able to move down further than the main station, which is fine, but felt weird. The build and demolish tools are buttons rather than LMB and RMB, which imo are more intuitive and less clunky to use.

Alright, the bads of the game aside, I do wanna give credits on the polish of the game. It actually felt really nicely polished, with the animations and whatnot. The sound design and music was also pretty nice, and the art too! And- this part tells me that this game actually has quite some potential: once i got the hype train upgrade (on my 4th play i think), the gameplay actually felt fun. I could actually focus on strategizing my tracks. The upgrades finally felt somewhat useful. Essentially it made the whole experience nice rather than frustrating. And welp I got 11 rides in the end with hype train:

Tldr: if you fix the game balance, some rng issues, polish up on some current features so that they feel nicer, this game could actually be really fun!

Lots of potential to be had! It's the kind of game with an addictive gameplay loop that keeps you going. It's hard to judge how well the mechanics work in the long run due to the balancing issues unfortunately but I'm sure that'll get rectified. I really enjoyed the theming and the graphical polish as well, the effects of the *tickets* are also very creative and really encourage playing the game differently depending on your build, which is great for replay value. Only real issue I've had (outside of the balance) is the sometimes wonky way rails connect to other rails you don't want to or stations outside the map.

interesting!

WOW Roguelike game of a train. Lovely.

I totally agree with some comments posted here. The progression problem and the ilegal station placements.

Anyways, the game has lots of potential, I can see it!

With nothing more to say, I like trains.

Great idea for a game, and we love the choose 1-of-3 things mechanics over here.

One piece of feedback was that I didn't realise I could move the map upwards to show more stations, so a little UI hint there would be ideal, but I figured it out eventually!

And you want to try some more roguelike fun we built a deckbuilder for jam game, and would love to hear your feedback too!

That was a very fun game to play! I love roguelikes and this one definitely scratched that itch. The sound design  was perfect and it really helped immerse my in the game. I also like the different upgrades and the art + animations for the tickets ripping was great. As others have said, the RNG could be a bit unfortunate sometimes with impossible levels but that doesn't take away from the great game you made!

Hey fellow jammer! I enjoyed playing the game.... I LOVE TRAINS (if you haven't figured that out by my username). I like how simple the mechanics are and how complex the puzzle is. One big problem I encountered was impossible levels. Once I hit the fifth or sixth level, the game starts giving me impossible levels, as there are not enough passengers in the stations at all to complete the level, even with multiple nice view tickets. That ruined the experience quite a bit for me as the game became very RNG-heavy.

Despite that, I still love this game, and it is rather impressive how you piece it together in 4 days! This game looks almost like a complete game instead of a game jam game... GGs!

Great game, I love see the other roguelikes people made for this jam! I really love all the visual effects and things flying around the screen it really adds so much to the vibe of the game. Great job!

Nice game, I love card-roguelikes so this was very much a bonus for me already - just sad that it isn't very balanced and super luck based basically! But cool concept and I could definitely see myself play more of this :)

Cool little game with an oldschool feel to it, I like it! Also, passing by each station and hearing the pops for each person boarding was a real treat.