{"id":7748,"date":"2025-01-14T10:54:05","date_gmt":"2025-01-14T18:54:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/?p=7748"},"modified":"2025-04-11T16:29:14","modified_gmt":"2025-04-11T23:29:14","slug":"train-valley-revisited","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/archives\/7748","title":{"rendered":"Train Valley Revisited"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>When I started this blog, I posted about every game I played. That hasn&#8217;t been the case for a long time, and some games that have eaten large portions of my life have gone completely unremarked on. <a href=\"\/stack\/archives\/6156\">I did make a solitary post about <em>Train Valley 2<\/em> a few years back<\/a>, but this does not even begin to cover my experiences with it.<\/p>\n<p>To recap a little: In contrast to the original <em>Train Valley<\/em>, which is a scramble to meet unpredictable demands (a bit like <em>Mini Metro<\/em>, but with completely different mechanics), <em>Train Valley 2<\/em> is about making a plan and then executing that plan. It&#8217;s essentially a crafting game, where the crafting is mediated by trains: a city might need, say, dozen Copper Ingots, which are made at that factory over there out of Copper Ore and Coal, each of which is produced at a mine somewhere else on the map using Workers. (Workers are, like everything else, a consumable resource.) You have multiple demands to meet within a time limit <span class=\"footnote_referrer\"><a role=\"button\" tabindex=\"0\" onclick=\"footnote_moveToReference_7748_1('footnote_plugin_reference_7748_1_1');\" onkeypress=\"footnote_moveToReference_7748_1('footnote_plugin_reference_7748_1_1');\" ><sup id=\"footnote_plugin_tooltip_7748_1_1\" class=\"footnote_plugin_tooltip_text\">1<\/sup><\/a><span id=\"footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_7748_1_1\" class=\"footnote_tooltip\">That is, there isn&#8217;t a time limit <em>per se<\/em>. You can exceed the par time and still meet all your other goals. But only if you&#8217;re willing to settle for <em>fewer than five stars.<\/em><\/span><\/span><script type=\"text\/javascript\"> jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_7748_1_1').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_7748_1_1', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top right', relative: true, offset: [10, 10], });<\/script>, and thus have to prioritize, sending your trains where they&#8217;re most needed.<\/p>\n<p>I think I found this structure most appealing at times when I felt blocked in other areas of my life. If I can&#8217;t make progress in my real plans, at least I can make a plan and execute it in Train Valley. The fact that it really does involve <em>making<\/em> a plan is important, I think. So many modern games tell you outright what you need to do at every moment, but <em>TV2<\/em> just delivers a bunch of requirements and constraints and lets you figure out what needs to be done. The result is something that I found extremely compelling, to a perhaps unhealthy degree, downloading and playing user-made levels well past the point of enjoyment. I&#8217;ve uninstalled it several times, but then they&#8217;d come out with a new DLC pack<span class=\"footnote_referrer\"><a role=\"button\" tabindex=\"0\" onclick=\"footnote_moveToReference_7748_1('footnote_plugin_reference_7748_1_2');\" onkeypress=\"footnote_moveToReference_7748_1('footnote_plugin_reference_7748_1_2');\" ><sup id=\"footnote_plugin_tooltip_7748_1_2\" class=\"footnote_plugin_tooltip_text\">2<\/sup><\/a><span id=\"footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_7748_1_2\" class=\"footnote_tooltip\">One of the DLC packs adds back the random passenger trains from the original <em>Train Valley<\/em>, letting people mix together the two play styles in a single level. My reaction to this is usually annoyance and a desire to get through the random stuff as quickly as possible so it stops interfering with the execution of my plans.<\/span><\/span><script type=\"text\/javascript\"> jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_7748_1_2').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_7748_1_2', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top right', relative: true, offset: [10, 10], });<\/script> and I&#8217;d begin the cycle anew.<\/p>\n<p>Last year, an ad on the <em>TV2<\/em> main menu announced the release of a third <em>Train Valley<\/em> game, <em>Train Valley World<\/em>. Despite a title containing a word suggestive of MMOs, this game turns out to still be essentially about levels playable by a single player. It does add multiplayer modes, but this is of not much use to me, as I don&#8217;t know anyone else interested in these games. It changes up the presentation and feel once more, basically going for something more like <em>Civilization VI<\/em>: levels are larger still than <em>TV2<\/em>, the graphics are finer and typically viewed at a greater distance, and, as in <em>Civ<\/em>, the cities all have names this time, these names being the names of real cities, even though the geography they&#8217;re placed in is nothing like reality. The tracks follow the same tile system as always, but the larger scale makes this fade in relevance. Instead of placing a route by dragging over every tile you want it to go through, you usually just click on a series of waypoints.<\/p>\n<p>But the largest change to the feel of the thing is in how you give orders to trains. In the previous games, you send trains on single missions. You&#8217;d select a source of freight and a destination to bring it to, and a train would do that once, and then it would be done. If you wanted to send four trainloads of lumber to a sawmill, you&#8217;d give that order four times, perhaps using all of your trains in a convoy to send it all the lumber it will ever need at once. In <em>TVW<\/em>, you program a route into a train, potentially including multiple stops where it drops off one freight and picks up another, and then that train repeats that route until given new orders. Or attempts to, anyway; sometimes it can&#8217;t, like if a source of freight is empty, or a destination is full and can&#8217;t take any more. The overall gameplay, then, becomes less dominated by goals. It still has goals similar to <em>TV2<\/em>, with cities having specific demands, but you reach those goals by creating stable, balanced systems than can keep running indefinitely without your attention.<\/p>\n<p>And for whatever reason, I find this a great deal less compelling than the get-it-done-and-then-stop approach of <em>TV2<\/em>. Perhaps it&#8217;s because it suggests endless labor, even if I&#8217;m not the one performing that labor. I&#8217;ve played through the <em>TVW<\/em> campaign, but I don&#8217;t feel drawn back to it. I&#8217;m hoping this breaks my <em>Train Valley<\/em> habit for good.<\/p>\n<div class=\"speaker-mute footnotes_reference_container\"> <div class=\"footnote_container_prepare\"><p><span role=\"button\" tabindex=\"0\" class=\"footnote_reference_container_label pointer\" onclick=\"footnote_expand_collapse_reference_container_7748_1();\">&#x202F;<\/span><span role=\"button\" tabindex=\"0\" class=\"footnote_reference_container_collapse_button\" style=\"display: none;\" onclick=\"footnote_expand_collapse_reference_container_7748_1();\">[<a id=\"footnote_reference_container_collapse_button_7748_1\">+<\/a>]<\/span><\/p><\/div> <div id=\"footnote_references_container_7748_1\" style=\"\"><table class=\"footnotes_table footnote-reference-container\"><caption class=\"accessibility\">References<\/caption> <tbody> \r\n\r\n<tr class=\"footnotes_plugin_reference_row\"> <th scope=\"row\" class=\"footnote_plugin_index_combi pointer\"  onclick=\"footnote_moveToAnchor_7748_1('footnote_plugin_tooltip_7748_1_1');\"><a id=\"footnote_plugin_reference_7748_1_1\" class=\"footnote_backlink\"><span class=\"footnote_index_arrow\">&#8593;<\/span>1<\/a><\/th> <td class=\"footnote_plugin_text\">That is, there isn&#8217;t a time limit <em>per se<\/em>. You can exceed the par time and still meet all your other goals. But only if you&#8217;re willing to settle for <em>fewer than five stars.<\/em><\/td><\/tr>\r\n\r\n<tr class=\"footnotes_plugin_reference_row\"> <th scope=\"row\" class=\"footnote_plugin_index_combi pointer\"  onclick=\"footnote_moveToAnchor_7748_1('footnote_plugin_tooltip_7748_1_2');\"><a id=\"footnote_plugin_reference_7748_1_2\" class=\"footnote_backlink\"><span class=\"footnote_index_arrow\">&#8593;<\/span>2<\/a><\/th> <td class=\"footnote_plugin_text\">One of the DLC packs adds back the random passenger trains from the original <em>Train Valley<\/em>, letting people mix together the two play styles in a single level. My reaction to this is usually annoyance and a desire to get through the random stuff as quickly as possible so it stops interfering with the execution of my plans.<\/td><\/tr>\r\n\r\n <\/tbody> <\/table> <\/div><\/div><script type=\"text\/javascript\"> function footnote_expand_reference_container_7748_1() { jQuery('#footnote_references_container_7748_1').show(); jQuery('#footnote_reference_container_collapse_button_7748_1').text('\u2212'); } function footnote_collapse_reference_container_7748_1() { jQuery('#footnote_references_container_7748_1').hide(); jQuery('#footnote_reference_container_collapse_button_7748_1').text('+'); } function footnote_expand_collapse_reference_container_7748_1() { if (jQuery('#footnote_references_container_7748_1').is(':hidden')) { footnote_expand_reference_container_7748_1(); } else { footnote_collapse_reference_container_7748_1(); } } function footnote_moveToReference_7748_1(p_str_TargetID) { footnote_expand_reference_container_7748_1(); var l_obj_Target = jQuery('#' + p_str_TargetID); if (l_obj_Target.length) { jQuery( 'html, body' ).delay( 0 ); jQuery('html, body').animate({ scrollTop: l_obj_Target.offset().top - window.innerHeight * 0.2 }, 380); } } function footnote_moveToAnchor_7748_1(p_str_TargetID) { footnote_expand_reference_container_7748_1(); var l_obj_Target = jQuery('#' + p_str_TargetID); if (l_obj_Target.length) { jQuery( 'html, body' ).delay( 0 ); jQuery('html, body').animate({ scrollTop: l_obj_Target.offset().top - window.innerHeight * 0.2 }, 380); } }<\/script>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When I started this blog, I posted about every game I played. That hasn&#8217;t been the case for a long time, and some games that have eaten large portions of my life have gone completely unremarked on. I did make a solitary post about Train Valley 2 a few years back, but this does not [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[669,670,754],"class_list":["post-7748","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-train-valley","tag-train-valley-2","tag-train-valley-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7748","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7748"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7748\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7777,"href":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7748\/revisions\/7777"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7748"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7748"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7748"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}