Steel Artery: Train City Builder

First of all, the game has a really good concept and art style, and I hope it will improve over time. However, for now, I have to leave a negative review. There are many basic features missing that other games in this genre already have. For example, there is no way [To my knowledge] to lock certain work slots or automatically remove workers from buildings that no longer have access to resources (such as miners assigned to a tile with no ore left). Another issue is the very strict balance required to keep everyone alive. If you have too much wastewater, you cannot simply dump it, which means showers and toilets stop working even if you have plenty of fresh water available. The same applies to money, if cabins contain too much money, nobody can sleep in them. Why can't passengers simply sleep for free in that situation? Unfortunately, I feel that the whole concept of basing the economy on money does more harm than good. The overall game loop also feels illogical. You are expected to take care of your passengers, but you cannot really do that from the start because you first need to establish a production chain for all the necessary parts and components. As a result, the game forces you to recruit more and more people while simultaneously preventing you from meeting their basic needs by building enough showers, toilets, and cabins. If you focus on providing those necessities too early, you can end up soft-locked and unable to build the production infrastructure needed for further expansion. As other people have said, the game has great potential but should still be in Early Access while more work is being done on it. I hope the dev continues to improve it so that I can change my review later.

hmm, for now, i really can't recommend anyone buying this game, even if it doesn't cost much, i don't need a long write up, i just need to lay out its issues, i'll write everything here for you to read and judge if this can serve as your reference. ==================== the biggest flaw of this game right now is the overly unrestrained total free will and weird unregulated movement logic of the ai, if an ai is supposed to travel from point a to point b for work every day, the normal logic is that it holds a fixed work station so it will follow this route repeatedly until it gets dismissed, but this game does not work like that, the ai will not stay at point a permanently, and once it leaves point a or point b, it will wander off to nowhere, its path changes completely every single day, its movement logic makes it dash randomly between point a b c d e f g with no order at all, you can never tell what it intends to do. ==================== the core idea and concept of this game are really interesting, you build an entire city aboard a train that travels between two continents and keep its production systems functional, this premise could have been fantastic, but the game's core design is deeply flawed. ==================== first major issue, you cannot control or assign your residents to jobs, all work assignments and choices are made by the residents themselves, everything is messy and totally unorganized, they choose to work only when they feel like it and ignore labor whenever they wish, on top of this, the ai logic has fatal flaws that leave countless work sites empty with no staff, the game opens by telling you to recruit workers to fill these empty posts and keep the train running, but as i mentioned, the ai has critical broken logic, the ai driven residents have dozens of needs and burn through supplies extremely quickly, even when you have enough available labor to fill every vacant work position, they still refuse to work, there is nothing you can do to fix this, they operate on total free will, they often just sit on the ground doing absolutely nothing, which shuts down many facilities on the train and halts all building construction, they only start to move right before they get automatically dismissed, and you have zero understanding of how their movement and work logic was programmed, you won't notice this problem in the very early game, once you build five to ten or more facilities, you will realize they do almost no work at all, paired with shift rotations and fixed working hours, the whole train is packed with idle aimless people, and this state of affairs is absolutely dreadful. ==================== second major issue, you have to keep your residents satisfied and fulfill their basic physical needs or they will stage work stoppages, but right at the start of a new playthrough, unless you manually edit the custom starting template to grant yourself more advantageous opening conditions, you can barely pull this off using the default template, residents require sanitation, food and sleep, so you need supporting facilities, toilets, shower rooms, rest quarters and mess halls, to keep these amenities running, you have to rush to construct research labs and unlock water collection huts and fishing huts as fast as possible, otherwise you will lack enough resources to sustain your residents, they will grow unhappy, refuse to work and even starve or die from thirst, but how can they produce these vital resources if they refuse to perform labor, this creates an unsolvable vicious cycle, if you mindlessly recruit more residents to board the train just to try to fill work quotas, this destructive cycle on your train will grow far worse, this is the heart of the problem, so i suggest editing a custom template to adjust your starting conditions, the entire game's economic production loop and ai logic function in reverse right now, you would expect things to follow straightforward logic like one plus one equals two, but the game acts as though one plus one equals five. ==================== to sum up based on these two core problems, you cannot build up a functional fast paced industrial production chain no matter how hard you try, no matter how many residents you hire, you hold no authority over them, they follow unregulated free will, their work and movement logic is entirely beyond your control and completely incomprehensible, the current state of the game is a train filled with dozens of empty unused work stations alongside huge groups of residents sitting idle wasting resources for no reason, and i simply cannot wrap my head around how the developers constructed this game's underlying ai logic and calculation systems.

Even though it says 1.0 the game is still in early access. There are a lot of bugs and key systems like logistics and storage often break with your peons getting stuck loading or unloading something. Once you get a large train you spend a lot of your time fixing broken buildings and stuck peons. It has a solid premise but needs a few more years of development.

I can see what Steel Artery is trying to be but I don't think it's ready for release yet. I like the idea of a complex, unforgiving city builder on a train. I've always liked stories about massive mobile - often dystopian - cities. I cannot recommend Steel Artery, as a management sim the UI needs an overhaul. The graphics are great, you can see that in the screenshots but the interface and tutorial... not so much. I sat for a bit thinking if I should write this review for the developer and try and point out what could be improved or just write it for potential players and leave it saying the UI is bad. I want to go to bed so I've chosen the easy way out. The tutorial also needs an overhaul. There are too many game mechanics introduced too quickly through too much text. I soft locked myself in the tutorial twice by not understanding what I shouldn't do. Maybe I'll try again in the future but not now. Lastly the music and sound fx - in so far as I heard - are minimal tending to missing. I want to hear the sounds of life on the train.

I didn't see any "Early Access" page, so I thought this game was done. It is currently not very playable. Balancing is not very good, especially in the early game. Completing the first quests yield no reward, and you apparently need to get halfway through the tech tree before leaving the starting area. I kept running out of "Iron parts" while trying to build the infrastructure necessary to make them: Mines, Smeltery, Forges. A more balanced game would ensure your base input resources allow you to bootstrap yourself to other techs, rather than relying exclusively on the starting resource pool. The tutorial is also pretty bad, I think if you faithfully followed it you'd get a "game over" because it slow walks you through everything. The soft music is also pretty underwhelming, feels like placeholder music. Not recommended.

Очень много микроменеджмента. Совершенно не интересно строить здания ,потом сносить их ,чтобы расчистить место и высвободить детали под новые постройки, затем снова сносить , снова строить и тп. Миллион зданий к постройке на ограниченном клочке местности - не рабочая идея. Это просто не весело.

Great concept, but very rough, un-polished. Resourse distribution along the rail lines make this really hard to fully enjoy. Volumn controls dont quite work. Transitioning between tier 1 and 2 is sloppy to the point of impossible. I look forward to what this game will be, with a bit of effort; but for now i cant recommend it.

Upon taking a look at Steel Artery: Train City Builder (SA: TCB) it felt like looking at Project Highrise. Create space, build within the space, maximize efficiency as much as possible. The more hours that I put into the game showed a different route. One of the main reasons why I bought this game is because of trains, and I love trains. In short, the game is a city-building game that requires the player to properly plan routes in order to acquire resources to keep the train running successfully (and all that that's within it)!  SA: TCB [b]gameplay[/b] is simple to start out with (provided with a nice tutorial) and gives the player generally a good amount of control over what happens with, on, and around the train. The primary goal is to keep the train functional, from being able to travel, to ensuring citizens are taken care of. The player can be given quests by Emperor to progress the story line and gain reputation points. Reputation points can be used to acquire materials from the Emperor in times of needs (or just times players feel like having a little extra). Building in the game is relatively simple and easy. The train requires a chassis to be built before placing structures. Structures also need to be supported by floor tiles, and those floor tiles require a frame underneath them and not blank space (no support). The game is quite finicky in its execution; a lot of confusing scenarios can happen given that the player doesn't properly troubleshoot the problem. Sometimes logistics, construction, or a potential bug may seem like the problem, but it could be very simply missing resources to build or a lack of workers. Research is also available in the game and gives the player a lot opportunity to keep the train running.  Although researching, refining, and extracting all seem awesome, there is a fine balance the game demands. This can be the amount of citizens needed (human, orc, or elves) for employment, it could be the social class (four in total, where the richest class doesn't even bother working), or it could be even finding citizens to let into the train to grow the population. The player interacts with a map in order to move the train. Different sections of the map provide different resources to be extracted. Coal of course is one of the main drivers of the game, but there will be other resources such as clean water, dirty water, iron ore, and others of the like that will help the player grow their train. Before structures are unlocked through the research tree, the player will need to extract resources around the map. To do this, extraction buildings must be unlocked and built. Though this all seems quite easy, this game does lean into being a more than average difficult game. Luckily, there are game modes that can be created to attempt to ease any major playthrough problems. The [b]controls[/b] are standard sort of RTS click, select, and keyboard shortcuts and camera movements.  The [b]visuals and graphics[/b] are pretty good, depending at what angle or sprite you're looking at. The map is a little rough looking, but does its job of being efficient and relaying information to player quickly. Animations seem pretty tight, especially for a pixelated-looking type game. There is a bit going on in the background and other parts of the game. There isn't really idle or background movement. For example players won't be seeing their population go on and off the train. I feel like this domain could use a bit more, even if it's just particle effects or some sort of shine. The [b]sounds and music[/b] are decently well done. Sounds seem to be associated with every sort of movement or action, though not overly annoying. There are other sounds (such as a the train departure horn) that actually have a purpose. Sounds like these are always a welcomed addition.  Overall, the game holds promise and seems to be created with passion. I tried out the demo and ended up buying the whole thing. The Dev released a statement a week after I bought it and felt like he should've released the game in Early Access. Probably would've been a good idea, but even on sale I felt the game was worth it (not well-worth it, but worth it). The fact the Dev is quite active and seems to working on regular updates gives us a promising story to tell about how a wonderful game was made. Gamers often know how these stories go sometimes, so as always, I encourage all readers - reading this review to do their homework (as always) and see if the game is something that would be up your alley. Decent game (which can sometimes be quite addicting), but I do hope it continues to receive updates. Needs something a little more to fully immerse the player.  [h1]RATING: 7.4/10[/h1] [table] [tr] [td]Gameplay[/td] [td]B-[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]Story / Campaign[/td] [td]B[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]Visuals / User Interface[/td] [td]B[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]Sounds / Music[/td] [td]B[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]Replay-ability[/td] [td]C+[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]Overall [/td] [td]B-[/td] [/tr] [/table]

I hesitate to recommend this 100% as there are some bugs / issues and a UI that I find a bit bare bones, but this game scratches an itch for me and I have been really enjoying it! It is NOT an easy game, but I think there is something very satisfying about it and I hope the dev continues to fix it as he has stated. Probably pulled the 1.0 trigger a bit too early, but its still enjoyable and I am glad I got it.

Мне очень хочется порекомендовать игру, но все же впечатления смешанные. При общем увлекательном геймплее сейчас игра больше создает впечатление игры в раннем доступе, чем ощущение полноценного релиза. За сои 20+ часов столкнулась с рядом достаточно багов, сюжетная линия слишком короткая и слишком простая, станции выполняют функцию просто точек на карте и не несут в себе никакой ценности. У игры большая предпосылка, но сейчас она просто... пустая. При этом стоит отметить положительные стороны - у игры приятная графика, приятный цикл геймплея, саундтрек и в общем чувство, что разработчик подошел с ИДЕЕЙ к игре. Если разработчик не забросит и продолжит полировать ее - крайне рекомендую к покупке. Если нет... чтож, стоит смело пройти мимо