Rail Route - a train dispatcher simulator [PC]

[Rail Route]

Hello Train Sim fans,

Maybe you could be interested in a upcoming video game Rail Route.

Rail Route is a management/tycoon/puzzle game based on railroad dispatching. Control the traffic, build out your own network, then optimize and expand. Unlock new technologies, upgrade the infrastructure, and automate operations! Design and share your own maps with the in-game editor.

💛 Passion project of two friends, developers and IT geeks at heart. We love trains and programming. We wanted to create something unique.

▶️ You can follow the game on Steam (don't forget to wishlist) and wait for release in June.
🎮 Or you can join our awesome Discord community and try the demo preview.

Feel free to ask me any questions! And btw. you can create your own maps and share it with others to play !

[jonpd]

Sounds interesting. I was a big fan of Railroad Tycoon and Train Dispatcher back in the day.

Jon

[metalangel]

I was on my way over to post this after seeing it on Facebook just now, but you’ve beaten me to it!

[seagoon]

This would be closer to prototypical if they represented the traffic with one character rather than a string of them fitted with a headlight.

I wonder how big the maps can be?

[SurvivorSean]

Not for me personally. As a developer I do wish you the best of luck as this probably appeals more to the casual gamer than dispatcher with old titles like TD3 standing the test of time. Even the classic Siam dispatcher has a good prototypical place in history.

Trust me I would love to see something beat the TD3.5 (Dead) & Run8V2 (working real hard on something which will be ready when it's ready) of the world. Would save me having to build it myself.

Again thanks for sharing though. I sincerely wish you nothing but the best of luck and as many sales. It's not easy being a developer and at least you have something to show for your hard work.

If you haven't seen already you may want to look at titles like Freight Yard Manager. The reason I suggest that is it might give you even more appeal to those that like the eye candy and want to run a concept similar to what you have going. The only changes would be real world below (you can get that through a drone like the one I have these days). In fact I may prototype something with some drone images I've taken and simple boxes like you have for a run.

Thanks

Sean

[SurvivorSean]

Just in case you haven't seen what TD3 looks like in action here is a small stream I did a few years ago.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jAaHree3qo8

James Hill has this good introductory video of FYM as well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VdZqV2PLcFk

What you have is certainly unique and it's probably too far along I would imagine to change course (nor would you want to with that much work put in and so close to release). If you go the graphics route FYM is a good example of what you can do with simple graphics representing the trains on an image. TD3 is a great example of prototype dispatching with the black background.

I'm sure there will be plenty of new people to the hobby though that haven't heard of these titles that you'll be able to reach with what you have going right now. Scoring, upgrades, level building, etc. will appeal more to the casual person interested in a challenge. It does look like fun.

Thanks

Sean

[NorthernWarrior]

Would be interested if it could do proper signalling simulations in the manner of the old SIAM games, SimSig or indeed TD3. With the power of an editor to create your own territories or signal panels/boards. But it looks more like a Transport Tycoon style of play. Happy to beproved wrong.

[Rail Route]

Thank you for the replies and your views. You are certainly right SurvivorSean and NorthernWarrior.

It was intentional to create more of a game by including all the gamification elements than real dispatcher simulator. You are also right that the target audience will be more casual gamers or those that are not fully into trains/dispatching/etc. But in the end, we have a lot of hard-core railway fans in the community and I must say, we don't want to keep them short, as our dev plans are a lot inspired by the community around the game. So maybe there will be more features/settings to give them a way more realistic and hard-core dispatching simulation in the future. And maybe we also will spread a word about how dispatching really looks to the common folks that have no idea right now .

And yeah, about the freight yard, I must say, it's already planned with the next big update . We want to introduce the shunting and freight yard as a new game mode.

[SurvivorSean]

That's cool. Again I wish you the best of luck and will keep an eye on this one.

Thanks

Sean