Sweet Transit
by Aethyna
Jul 29, 2022 |
1
Votes |
56
Played |
0
Reviews
9
rate
Platforms:
Genres:
SimulationPublishers:
Team 17Graphics:
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City Building , Trains Sweet Transit is a railway tycoon where you’ll not only be able to build and develop amazing cities, but also set up various production operations for the array of resources you’ll need to keep expanding. Manage your trains, the tracks, and the logistics of all the goods and laborers you transport to get the most efficient system! Play Now Similar Games Played
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Disclaimer: Sweet Transit is currently in early access and is still under development. This is simply a first impression, early access review of the game. We will definitely update this review to reflect any notable changes to the game after its official release.Summary
Sweet Transit is a railway tycoon where you’ll not only be able to build and develop amazing cities, but also set up various production operations for the array of resources you’ll need to keep expanding, such as wood, stone, coal and food for your laborers. Manage your trains, the tracks, and the logistics of all the goods and laborers you transport just so you can get the most efficient system!
Gameplay
If you’ve played any railway tycoon before, such as Rail Nation, you should be fairly familiar with the gameplay and what you need to generally do. If not, you don’t need to worry – the game comes with a comprehensive 4-segment tutorial covering increasingly more in-depth features of the game, from developing your town to placing signals on your train tracks just as to avoid having trains crashing into one another. However, the tutorial doesn’t cover everything – just the basics. There are still some features that are left for you to discover and try out on your own.
As with any railway tycoon, train assembling, route setup, and track constructions are the core part of the gameplay here. Assembling trains is as easy as clicking on the little Plus icon to add a wagon to your locomotive. If you made a mistake with your build, you can easily rearrange the wagons by dragging and dropping. You can even save your train builds as presets too by adding in a unique name for the build.
Naturally, the longer the train, the more passengers or cargo you can haul but there’s a little caveat here – you’ll, in turn, need to build longer train platforms for these trains to stop at. As you progress, you’ll unlock better and more efficient wagons and locomotives, so you’ll want to upgrade your existing trains at the train depot as well.
Routes are just as easy to set up as well. Give the route you want an insightful name – instead of just “Route 1”, maybe “Town 1 to Sawmill 1”? – and set all the destinations you want your train to stop at, how long to stop for, and any other parameters that might be helpful, such as whether it’s loading and unloading cargo or swapping workers. Similarly, if you made a mistake in the order of the destinations, you can easily use drag-and-drop to rearrange the destinations. Once a route is set, having your train run the route you want is as straightforward as clicking on the dropdown menu and choosing the route you’ve saved before.
Of course, having a route and a train ready, you still need to have properly-built tracks for your train to run on. Building train tracks is something that’s fairly easy to grasp in Sweet Transit. You can easily drag the tracks along the map grids you want the tracks to be on. Sometimes, you’ll need to build the tracks section by section just so you can have more control over exactly where your tracks are placed, but it’s not tedious at all. The tricky part here, however, is the signals that you’ll have to place along your tracks. You see, without signals breaking up the train tracks into more manageable segments, your train will risk end up colliding into one another.
In a way, think of the signals as a type of traffic lights that only allows your train to move to the next track segment as long as there isn’t another train on it. This also helps a lot to prevent collisions at intersections, much like what traffic lights do for our roads. There’s also another kind of signal called the Chain Signal that allows you to make your railway run more smoothly. These special signals are very helpful at intersections so as to prevent a train from stopping in the middle of an intersection and basically, causing a gridlock for the rest of your trains.
This aspect of the game can be a bit hard to wrap your head around, but trust me when I say that if you persevere, eventually a light bulb will go off in your head and everything just makes so much sense. Modifying or deleting tracks and signals can also be a bit tricky as well since the game has specific delete button for each item, though by deleting a stretch of train tracks, you’ll naturally delete anything else you place along the tracks like the signals.
Now, when it comes to developing your towns and keeping your trains running, you’ll need plenty of resources. To do so, you’ll need to set up production facilities around the map, transport workers from your town to said facilities, and then have another train – a cargo one thins time – transport the resources produced to your warehouse for storage or your town for consumption.
There are many industries that you can set up in this game, starting from the sawmill and the coal mines to quarries and potato farms, and all of them can be linked up with a train station to allow a flow of goods and workers to operate these industries. To avoid overwhelming the player though, you’ll only get to unlock new industries once you’ve reached a certain milestone in your game progression.
Unlike modern LRTs, trains need coal to function. With enough coal, they will be able to move at optimal speed. However, if they ran out of coal while on the tracks, they will still chug along albeit at a slower pace, holding up tracks that you might have so painstakingly optimized. So, there’s this consideration that if the track they have to run on are long, be sure to add a Coal Tender wagon and if needed, add a stop at a nearby coal-supplying station to stock up on some more coal.
Besides coal, food, wood and stone, money is also an important factor in this game. However, it is a factor that’s tied very closely with the population since it’s basically tax money. You can’t sell off the goods you produce, even if you have them in excess. From my playthrough, however, I’ve noticed that while expanding my railway network and my industries, I have never experienced a lack of funds. As long as you make sure to grow your town in tandem to the number of industries you set up, you should be good.
Town-building in this game is also very straightforward and easy to understand. You’ll need to build houses to get more workers, which you can then supply to your industries. People have needs so you’ll want to make sure they have everything they need, from water supply to having enough variety of food, to even having beautiful décor lining the streets.
Despite being in early access, Sweet Transit is a fully playable game with a solid tutorial and two campaigns, which doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of content. However, as mentioned on its Steam page, the developer has plenty of plans for the game, including more industries, people types, wagons, decorations, and goods; better UI, more expansive production chains, mod support, and more. So, there are plenty to look forward to in the future!
Graphics/ Sound
Granted that the game doesn’t exactly have the highest quality of graphics, the visuals here have an old-folksy charm to them, fitting well to the overall theme of the game. In terms of the sound, if you love jazz and the blues, you’ll fall in love with the soundtracks in Sweet Transit. The music matches the theme and the times of the game perfectly as well, and I think it’s great that the game shows you the song title and the artist just so you can easily look them up on YouTube or Spotify to find their other works.
Conclusion
Sweet Transit manages to break the notorious reputation of Early Access title by delivering what is essentially a solid railway tycoon game. With plenty of industries to set up, towns to build and develop, and a railway to optimize to your heart’s content, the game makes handling logistics – and I never thought I’d say this – FUN! What’s more impressive about all of this is the fact that the game is being developed by a sole developer.
So, if you’re into railway tycoons or you just love games with trains, Sweet Transit is one game you’ll want to jump aboard.
Sweet Transit Blog
New Game Added: Sweet Transit
by Aethyna
Jul 29, 2022
Sweet Transit is a railway tycoon where you’ll not only be able to build and develop amazing cities, but also set up various production operations for the array of resources you’ll need to keep expanding. Manage your trains, the tracks, and the logistics of all the goods and laborers you transport to get the most efficient system!
Read More
Train-powered City Builder 'Sweet Transit' arrives today in Steam Early Access
by Aethyna
Jul 29, 2022
Build an intricate rail network from the comfort of your PC, and enjoy 10% off during early access launch week
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