Game Metadata

Name: Mini Metro

Designer/Developer: Dinosaur Polo Club

Platforms: PC, Nintendo Switch, iOS, Android

Genre: Strategy

Goal: The aim of Mini Metro is to connect up stations with lines, and to move passengers to the stations they want to go to.

Learning Objectives

Metro Mini is an intense game. It might not look like in the beginning but soon it’ll start getting you anxious as you see passengers piling up on stations. If this is not making sense yet, read on.

Mini Metro is game about managing the metro systems in different cities around the world. The aim is to be as efficient as possible and make sure people can get to their destination quickly (The destinations are represented by shapes). The player starts off with London, Paris and New York and eventually get access to other cities as they play more.

The game has a two-fold goal:

At core this game teaches strategy and optimization. The player loses if a station has overcrowding.

It can be extrapolated to teach city planning and how public transport systems can get over burdened due to rapid urbanization. Though this is not explicitly mentioned.

The game assumes the basic knowledge of how a rapid transit system looks like (visually, for example a map of the London tube) and how multiple lines work toegtehr. Someone who is not familiar with this will have a steeper learning curve.

Opening/loading screen

Opportunities of transfer of knowledge

Once the player gets a hang of the basic principle of the game, how it works (add/remove lines, etc.) and has played for sometime is when the trouble begins. To fix overcrowding of stations - there are certain steps that need to be taken and in some way or the other these help in developing troubleshooting skills which are transferable.

1. Identify the bottleneck (you can also pause the game for this)
2. Find out resource available to clear the bottleneck.
3. If extra resources (carriages, new lines, tunnels, etc.) are available, then use those.
4. If not, find a short term fix (has failed till now :P )

Game Elements

Mechanics and systems

The player starts off with 3 stations and has to transport passengers by connecting different lines and leveraging available resources.

New stations keep popping up in the white-spaces that need to be added to existing or new lines. As time goes, the number of passengers also increase.

Game vocab:

Nouns: Lines, tunnels, passengers, stations, rails, coaches, exchange, carriage, cities, metro

Verbs: Connecting, building, transporting, adding (coaches to existing lines)

Gameplay

• The core loop requires the player to keep integrating the new stations into the map in a way that allows for the passengers to reach their destination in time.
• The game runs in a weekly cycle and the beginning of each week the player is given extra resources - extra line (shown by colors on the side), locomotive, carriage, tunnels, interchange)
• As the game evolves, the player might get a chance to choose between 2 assets. Based on their current situation, it is possible to predict the need for one that might benefit the gameplay.
• The tunnels are used to build stations that cross over rivers and other water bodies.
• There is some buffering time given to the the player in case a station gets overcrowded to figure out how what’s the nest way to clear that bottleneck.
• Interchange station can hold a much larger capacity and it makes sense to make the station with the maximum intersections the Interchange station.

Dynamics

• Time is key. If a new station is left unattended for a long time, passengers start gathering there.
• If overcrowding happens in the first half of the week and the player uses up all the resources to fix that, it will be very difficult to survive the week.
• Making an interchange station is really helpful from a long-term strategy point of view.
• The game allows for playing in different speeds and also allows for pausing to solve a bottleneck. The game also have different mode - the normal, endless and creative mode. I am yet to play the endless and creative mode.

Aesthetics

• This game has hands down one of the best mobile first 2D game design aesthetics (monument valley takes the prize for 3D!)

• The design is very modern and minimal. It draws inspiration from existing transit maps of the major cities around the world.

• The change in opacity when a line is shifted to let the player know this is the last journey is well-executed.

• The UI that the player interacts with in between games is modeled on signage design for transit systems.

• The sound design is soothing for the most time until chaos starts forming due to overcrowding. The incessant ticking can really get to you.

• The rotation- based transitions in the app are exciting to interact with.

  

  Inspiration from rapid transit signage systems

Player Experience:

• The game is excellent at giving a sense of control in the beginning.
• But the potential for the entire system to fall apart is so high that it makes the player do some really impulsive and damaging moves (cough, cough, yes I am did those) which then leads to the player losing.
• The need to beat your own high-score is REALLY high.
• It can potentially become so intense that the player might even forget to pause to rework the lines.

Learning Mechanisms

Mini Metro does not “explicitly” teach a concept and the learning principles are subtle and layered.

• Spacing: A game can last anywhere from 4-15 mins (even more I guess). After losing a long game, the player might come back to it after sometime which helps in giving a sub-conscious reflection period.

• Feedback: This one is a double edged sword. The audio/visual feedback for overcrowding gives a sense of which intersections need more resources. But the ticking can also make it a high pressure situation.

• Variability: Each city has a different staring point and a different layout for water bodies. the decision to add tunnels to cross lines can impact the game a lot. But this helps the player give a sense of designing for different layouts.

• Questioning: The game has a nifty feature of sharing screenshots and short videos of how the player reached the present layout (these can only be available after you lose the game). Looking at the video snapshot of the entire gameplay can be helpful in reflection and questioning the wrong moves.

  GIFs of gameplay

  GIFs of gameplay

Will these work?

Yes. I love the fact that the game does not start off with an explicit learning goal but teaches quite a bit about strategy, long and short-term planning, logistics, resource management and optimization all together.

Final Rating