Subway Builder: a Realistic Subway Simulation Game
Key topics
A new subway simulation game, Subway Builder, has been released, sparking discussion about its features, pricing, and availability, with some users expressing enthusiasm and others raising concerns about its value and development status.
Snapshot generated from the HN discussion
Discussion Activity
Very active discussionFirst comment
14m
Peak period
125
Day 1
Avg / period
22.2
Based on 133 loaded comments
Key moments
- 01Story posted
Oct 9, 2025 at 1:38 PM EDT
3 months ago
Step 01 - 02First comment
Oct 9, 2025 at 1:52 PM EDT
14m after posting
Step 02 - 03Peak activity
125 comments in Day 1
Hottest window of the conversation
Step 03 - 04Latest activity
Oct 19, 2025 at 6:41 PM EDT
3 months ago
Step 04
Generating AI Summary...
Analyzing up to 500 comments to identify key contributors and discussion patterns
Want the full context?
Jump to the original sources
Read the primary article or dive into the live Hacker News thread when you're ready.
He had some pretty interesting methods for 3D building transparency and stuff like that
https://dinopoloclub.com/games/mini-metro/
Where are the alternate forms transport: the bike paths and bike shares, LRTs/buses, and yes, roads? What about other upstream policy levers such as WFH mandates, and a decentralized urban core?
/s
One catch is that riders only need to get a particular "shape" of station (roughly analogous to residential, commercial, industrial, stadium, etc). That is to say, they normally don't insist on going to a particular station. Also and it's free in time, money, and political captial to change routes. The model is, I feel, slightly too simple to feel like real transport infra. That doesn't stop it being hella fun though.
Whenever the idea of light rail came up in my hometown, I would point out to my enthusiastic friends that without a better bus system, there’s not much point to rail.
No, they are both really fun (and highly addictive in my case). I like that you can do a scenario in 30-ish minutes (and even pause if you need to). I personally prefer Motorways over Metro, but alas, both highly recommended. Fantastic game design.
I'm like median on Metro, ~60 hours over years (though perhaps just the one hour, 60x, &c). Never too late to learn some strategy, I guess. Never played Motorways.
Lines or carriages: Early add lines, midgame add a loco, then carriages on the trunk that is actually redlining. Late add an interchange at the first overloaded transfer before more cars.
Tear-down: Hm... how much, not sure how to quantify. Definitely something you must do in every long running game but the extend is different. As a heuristic: Pause and rebuild when queues outrun a single weekly upgrade. Reorder shapes, make sure every line touches a square, split any mega-hub into two nearby transfers.
As you probably have guessed: There is no real silver bullet. Knowing the best move is basically impossible, the space is too complex. As a most useful general skill, it's important to recognize problems very early and optimize ruthlessly.
1. How important is it to make sure you alternate symbols? (Beyond the obvious of not having 3 in a row). Do you go out of your way to avoid two in a row?
2. Is it better to put major junctions at the most common circle/triangle symbols, or on squares, or the rarer ones?
3. How much imortance do you place on the slowdown from lines crossing not at stations? I always go out of my way to avoid doing it but I wonder if I overrate the importance of it in my mind.
4. When you notice that some random station along a single line is getting a lot more traffic than other ones, do you shift other lines to cross it or just add more carriages?
One of the most frustrating (but addicting) things with the game is that a couple of my highest scores happened when I first started playing it, before I thought I knew any tricks at all! Wish I could see what the best players' maps end up looking like.
Oh yeah, one more question... do you play the secret level? What actually happens there, or is it just a gag?
2. Where to put big junctions: Squares are rare magnets, so giving every line access to at least one square prevents square-bound riders from piling up on transfers. My "major" hub is usually a square near the geographic center or a bridge choke, and I try not to merge too many trunks into one block-split load across two nearby interchanges if possible. If you have special shapes (stars, etc.), connecting each special to exactly one line that meets others only at an interchange keeps flows predictable.
3. Crossing lines away from stations: It's not catastrophic, but on busy trunks the cumulative hit adds up. I'll avoid mid-block crossings on high-throughput segments; elsewhere I don't contort the whole map just to eliminate a single crossing. Net: treat it as a tax, pay it only when it saves tunnels or ugly detours.
4. Random station getting swamped: Triage in this order: turn it into an interchange (boarding speed), add a loco, then a carriage on the most burdened line, and only then re-route another line to cross it. If nothing stabilizes, drop a short "shuttle" micro-line from that station straight to a square/triangle sink, then delete it once the queue clears. Pausing to redraw aggressively is part of the game.
On those early "beginner's luck" highs: seed luck is real but also the game rewards ruthless mid-game rebuilds more than early cleverness. Don't be sentimental about lines-pause, re-lay, and keep every line touching a square.
I have not heard of or seen a secret level!
The secret level plays in endless mode. On the home screen of the game, tap the white arrow in the upper left corner to go to the credits page. Then return to the home screen and go to the credits page again. The second time there will be a sort of gear looking design next to the credits. Tap on that.
I don't know if there's a further easter egg to solving it but maybe you'll figure it out ;)
I've reached a point where I don't feel I'm improving and I'm not discovering any more tricks.
Going online to find other people's solutions just feels wrong. Like buying a "how to complete $X" from the olden days. I don't learn when someone else provides the way to a solution; I like progressive learning, and I dislike the frustration when I stop progressing.
I keep wondering about the meta-problem of how to change my mental gears...
There's an itch to create my own version of the game which would force me to learn the underlying mathematics. Most games are designed to level your skills or knowledge up slowly (sometimes a social component involved). Building yourself forces one to understand the constraints better.
OR do I just train up my meta-skills e.g. playing similar but different games?
I do feel stupid!
Obviously I've also reached my limit on the metagame here, given that I'm asking...
When you reach an impass with a solo intellectual challenge, what's the next step?
Also, how much time would you say it's taken you to refine your skill to get to that 1%?
Alas! I lie awake many a nights.
> Also, how much time would you say it's taken you to refine your skill to get to that 1%?
Just checked Steam stats. Surprisingly (well, to me) little: Around 60 hours of Mini Metro and 200 hours of Mini Motorways. I guess it's not exactly competitive esports.
You can disable that in the settings.
https://x.com/colin_d_m
This feels something closer to Puffin Planes ($12), Rail Route ($25), Station Flow ($18).
The difference between $25 and $30 isn't too much, but there's another significant hurdle to get up to a perceived $40 value.
It does look interesting, but for a purchase at that price point, I'm going to need to feel that its worth more than a weekend or two of gaming and something that will be a game that I want to pick up again after a month or two away from it.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1124180/Rail_Route/ is pretty niche (and is in my library) ... and its $25, which is a fair bit less than the $40 price point planned for Steam. https://store.steampowered.com/app/1134710/NIMBY_Rails/ NIMBY Rails is at $19 (also in my library).
It could very well be a great game... though that price is one that's setting the expectations for it high.
It's a hard sell for me, considering Factorio has a ton of actively developed mods (cough Space Exploration 0.7 cough), a demo, and in early access era it's cheaper and insanely polished.
From a quick glance, I'm not sure whether it's a fun game or not, as realism tends to be not fun. Requiring an internet connection for map tiles also sounds not good for offline play.
Well, I'll wait for reviews when it's out before deciding then.
OK nvm my congratulations to the game designer!
I do kind of miss riding it though. For the last couple years I was living there, I got to ride the Ashmont-Mattapan trolleys as part of my commute. That was a treat. One of the last weeks before we moved to Vermont, my wife rode down to Ashmont with me and rode the trolley to Mattapan, then back to Ashmont to take the Red Line back to her office.
The biggest changes are that you can pay with tap to pay everywhere, which is nice, and the trains drive a lot more cautiously, which irritates me because they feel considerably slower now.
https://wiki.openttd.org/en/Manual/Local%20authority#bribe-t...
There is a class-action lawsuit on this that's been ongoing for half a decade now, but as far as I can tell the plaintiffs have not been able to produce any actual contract text supporting this claim. The closest their filings come is some random customer support rep.
But this is a very weird way to sell a game.
1st, we have Steam. That's where I and most people buy games. 30$ for a random exe is going to be really inconvenient.
Launch it on Steam at the same time, or at a minimum promise a key.
It's also not clear why it's just a bunch of American cities, if you're pulling the data from Google anyway, any city ( within reason) should work. If you need additional data, let users add it.
Maybe on steam I'll buy it
They said they pulled commuter data from the census and another source. They'd need to get a few datasets from other countries to pull it off that aren't in google maps.
I'll wait on the Steam release.
I like the concept and am intrigued but at this price point I'll wait for reviews from people who have played it extensively.
Now excuse me, my Pather friends called and there is a colony using ai which must be purged by Lud’s holy fire.
Highly recommended space sim for anyone else reading this!
https://www.subwaybuilder.com/simulation
Huh. I feel like the average US city would require a very different _sort_ of metro to the average European or East Asian city, if it even had the density to make it work at all. Like, more diversity in city types would make it a more interesting game.
Does any US city besides NYC even have a full subway network (vs one or two lines?)
Boston and SF in my limited experience have somewhat usable networks but definitely a step below
RimWrld, a game with a small dev team but seemingly endless potential is $28.00 for the base game.
I can't imagine how this game could justify those $40.
https://www.openstreetmap.org/about
EDIT: Nevermind, purchased and answered my own question. Outer cities included going clockwise from north bay: Novato, Vallejo, Benicia, Brentwood, Livermore, Santa Teresa, Los Gatos, the full peninsula northward starting from Half Moon Bay. So a good amount, but missing some outer commuting areas like Santa Rosa, Fairfield, Tracy, Gilroy.
* Map tile rendering is laggy; edges of map are constantly unrendered when rotating the view.
* UI seems not very well thought-out, lots of modality for no good reason. Why do I need to turn off population density view before I can build a station?
* Controls non-intuitive - where exactly do I have to click to connect two stations with a track? (It somehow worked once, and I was unable to repeat it.)
* Undo / Ctrl-Z doesn't work (cannot undo deletion of tracks or station).
* Tutorial hints for some reason always point to a fixed coordinate on your screen rather than a location on the map, so if you zoom or pan, the hint for where to build will now point to a completely different map location. With no way to return to the original location. Is that intentional? Why?
* Can we get names of water bodies, major landmarks, major streets on the map? It would add a lot of character.
A great name for this game would be Hell.