This week I will be analyzing the game Mini Metro for it’s formal and dramatic elements.
The game is a simulation game that involves building subway routes on maps of large cities. The game uses multiple colors and basic shapes and is not going for realism at all here. You are looking from a bird’s eye view on an evolving map of a city that is expanding. You can see your subway lines with the trains moving in real time. You want to get people (various shapes) to their corresponding stations before a station over crowds. These are the game basics.
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First, let’s look at what formal elements are present. These elements are the maps, the number of lines, the number of trains, and the passengers, and the building resources. All of these elements are the building blocks to the basic gameplay. When the game was in it’s early stages, I was able to play it during it's early access on Steam. From the beginning, the input has not changed much, but how it is perceived has been continuously modified to engage the player more. When you click or do something, you want to feel a response. At first, there was no response that felt engaging in the long term. Being in control of an active simulation/strategy game, it makes sense that actions you take need to do more than just flash on the screen. I’ll cover more of this in dynamics. As for context, the game is simply a strategy simulation of an interactive subway map. Just picture any subway map, but imagine seeing the trains on there in real time.
It is a cool concept and is simple to visualize and understand. Everything you do it click-based. There are a few shortcut keys but 99 percent is click. Everything you experience is within the context of the game. The motion of the trains, the sounds, the colors, everything goes. Now if the game were going for realism, then those contexts are missing. The game is a black or white backdrop with shapes and lines. That is it. You have to use your association with subways and maps to figure out what everything us. The game’s metaphor is clear. It is real time simulation. Every time you play the game, it is different. No map will ever repeat where the stations are. In some cases, you can play maps with different sets of rules, such as once a track is placed, it cannot be moved. There are also various ways to play, each unlocking different achievements and goals. This lends the game to increased future playability. It is something you can start and come back to versus just playing it once.
Looking towards the games dynamics, these have evolved a lot since the initial beta stages. The game is now finalized, but when I first encountered the game, the dynamic responses were missing. The main problem was a lack of music or any audio for that matter. Subways, as we all know, are pretty loud and noisy and to be playing without that experience present felt strange. It made the game boring. The actual play was fun but lacked response. Over time, with updating the game, more audio was implemented. There is now the sounds of passengers and platforms and a clock that ticks slow or fast depending on when the station is overcrowding. Now we have the feel of the hustle and bustle. The music that was implemented is also unique and changes on play to play. Every time a station is created a part of the melody is added. The same goes for adding a line to the map. Everything is building upon itself. The type of music implemented is algorithmic based interactive music. You can read about that in the game here. There is motion all about the map. Each map slowly grows and grows until a certain point. So in this case our environment is always shifting. The polishing done in this game was mainly the audio. The color schemes went through a few revisions too. Now, each map has its own sets of color schemes. Before, there was a lot less variation. The audio, which is very interactive in terms of this game was the polish that makes it captivating and puts the player in the experience of running a subway line.
