Transport tycoons are an entertaining genre: a rich past, a rather vague present and a very vague future. What can we say, if a remake of the very Transport Tycoon from the recently revived MicroProse – OpenTTD is still relevant, despite its considerable age. Recently, the old man turned 17 years old, and he celebrated this event not with his retirement, but with a release on Steam.
Elements of the genre can be found in a variety of strategies from Factorio to Cities: Skylines and in even more specific products, such as railway simulators or mods for Minecraft , but there are almost no major fresh projects dedicated to a purely transport theme now. If we remove the most notable exception in the form of two parts of Transport Fever , then we can assume that transport strategies are developing only at the expense of independent developers.
More confirmation of this – Voxel Tycoon from the eponymous domestic studio (in which only two people work), which appeared on Steam Early Access in mid-April.
Speedone
Great is seen at a distance
From the name of the game it is clear what kind of technology the developers use when creating the tycoon. The surface of the world is built from small cubes, and all objects are drawn rather schematically, as is usually the case in voxel graphics. Nevertheless, this approach did not go to the detriment of beauty. On the contrary – VT looks pretty nice and cute, the eye only clings to the irregularities of the landscape at maximum zoom. Considering that the size of one cube that makes up the world is comparable to the size of a truck, the elevation differences turn out to be too chopped.
If you move the camera away, then there is nothing to complain about at all – the world, divided into biomes (from desert to tundra), pleases the eye. Houses, cars, trains – all objects, due to the same voxel graphics, look somewhat toy-like, but this only emphasizes the unique style.
Well, it’s beautiful!
To match the general VT style and interface. Minimalism, smooth shapes, pleasant, almost tactile sensations from interacting with windows and buttons – very convenient, except that I had to zoom in a little, since the labels are too small by default. It also features unobtrusive background music, perfect for leisurely gameplay.
All this together makes Voxel Tycoon very cozy. A big plus for such strategies, where the pleasure of the game lies in the simple observation of the life of an independently built transport empire.
It is possible to place signals on the tracks automatically, which is quite convenient.
Not only transportation
Nevertheless, for such a tycoon, the first place is still not the convenience of contemplating wagons and trucks rolling back and forth, but the very process of developing one’s own transport business.
Here VT stars from the sky are not enough – the gameplay is not much different from the same OpenTTD . We build roads, pull railway branches, buy cars and trains, deliver goods from the manufacturer to the consumer and transport passengers, optimize the logistics chain and help the cities on the map to grow, gradually opening up new regions and areas for the extraction and sale of raw materials.
OpenTTD or Transport Fever are more likely to remain role models, because Voxel Tycoon is somewhat simpler – for example, we have no competitors in the face of AI companies. New models of transport and buildings appear due to the research carried out by the player and do not depend on the passage of time, therefore, the course of history and the development of transportation (from horse-drawn transport to modern aviation) are not felt here at all, which once again emphasizes the abstractness and playfulness of the world. Yes, and there is no aviation, as well as ships – only trains and cars.
It’s easy to create and edit routes; from the nice little things – automatically generated names for them.
However, do not forget that we have only early access and, judging by the development roadmap, the tycoon should be significantly overgrown with content for the release.
On the other hand, there is an opportunity here to engage in the creation of goods on their own, which brings VT closer to the related genre of production strategy. Factories, production chains, conveyors … Hello Factorio !
You can, of course, ignore the requests of urban enterprises wishing to purchase high-tech products and transport only the main raw materials, but for the full development of your company you cannot do without your own factories. It was not for nothing that I remembered Factorio – given that goods for processing in factories need to be moved using conveyors, a similar analogy suggests itself first.
The first attempts to create their own production. It is still much more convenient to pull conveyors in Factorio.
Better wait
The comparison, however, will not be in favor of Voxel Tycoon – as good as this game looks, it is just as inconvenient to build here.
For example, there is no planning tool – if you made a mistake with placing a road or building on one square, be so kind as to redo it, demolishing everything clean. Roads already behave rather capriciously when it comes to joining an existing track or building at a height difference. A separate torment is the creation of railway junctions: I want the game to help create symmetrical and regular shapes, but instead I have to figure out by eye where and how to start turning the rails. There is no need to talk about the luxury of preserving path templates – all this is in the same place, in the plans for the development of early access.
In general, there are much more imperfections here than it seems at first glance. The short training does not reveal the depths of the game at all – VT is definitely not created for beginners in the genre, despite the simple design that is conducive to this (compare with the realistic Transport Fever or the monstrosity of OpenTTD ). Statistics are very poorly presented, and there are no graphs at all, which is very strange for a tycoon. The lack of multiplayer and nice little things, like a sandbox mode or a mini-map, can also be mentioned, even though they promise to finish all this sooner or later.
A slight narrowing of the tracks at the bend in front of the intersection turned out to be a rather insidious thing – it does not interfere with trains, but the signals on this section may not work correctly, so it is better to separate the tracks further from each other.
I was a little upset that the very “voxel” was not involved in the gameplay. I would like to see how the mining mines gradually “eat” the ore cube by cube, changing the landscape, and at least some semblance of a simulation of the physics of water and earth would not hurt – such terraforming is always interesting. In the meantime, you can only dig and fill the earth with a separate tool and indulge in a “bomb” that immediately destroys a huge piece of the surface.
With the help of the first-person view, you can “ride” any train or car, or even “walk on foot”.
Funny that Voxel Tycoonarouses interest in virtual railway construction, but in the end I want to postpone this strategy for the time being and go to master this science in the time-tested OpenTTD or Factorio .
Here, at the moment, only the design can be unambiguously praised: the game instantly has a cozy appearance, a convenient interface and pleasant music. At first, it seems that the content will match, but in fact, early access signs are noticeable literally everywhere – the developers still have a lot of work to do to bring their project closer to the ideal.
