Loco Mania Demo

[RainOfTerror]

Loco Mania is a fast paced, action/strategy game that puts you in charge of managing an entire railway network. Players have to control switches, semaphores and train directions to get the trains through the system as quickly and efficiently as possible.

Lighthouse has released a Loco Mania demo allowing you to try out the Time Attack mode, with 3 different maps. The faster you complete the challenges the higher you will score. So stay on...

Get the Loco Mania demo (http://www.worthplaying.com/article.php?sid=31950) (115mb) over at WorthPlaying.

[Varsity]

This is pretty well put together. A few UI niggles and one ill-advised gameplay gameplay element, but fun otherwise.

[askheaves]

At this time, 40 comments on the news story below this one on how boring Everquest II is. A new orignal game comes along, and you ungrateful bastards can't even make a comment on it. Probably didn't even try it out. For shame. Haters, all of you.

Actually, this doesn't interest me that much either. Seems like 115Meg worth of Pop-Cap game with no screenshots to justify the size.

And EQ is boring.

[Citizen Philip]

The game is scheduled to begin shipping across Europe by the end of February 2006.

I guess the Railway Tychoon series has much of the North American market tied up?

[kid cabelgo]

if anybody else has played this, come more comments would be nice. otherwise i'll just download it now and try it out for myself.

oh, and as for askheaves, WORD.

[Arphahat]

OK, I downloaded and played for a bit. It is a fun concept and I'll probably give it another, longer try tonight.

My first impression is that it is difficult to correct a mistake. For example, once you cross a switch, if you back up and cannot backup far enough (it will take you off screen) you cannot change the switch.

It is also somewhat cumbersome navigating through the world; the default view when you click on a train icon is a up too high looking almost straight down and I need to correct every time.

Aside from that, it was fun. Fun enough where I may consider purchasing the full game.

Oh, and BTW, EQ sucks. ;)

[Novacaine]

I downloaded it also. I was hoping for a railroad tycoon type game in which you control your trains and where they would go. But that's not what it is. It's actually somewhat fast paced. Once you have 3 trains all going around you really have to jump around to make all the switches - not all that much fun. The TAB key gives you a larger map of the entire layout which helps a lot. The interface also allows you to easily jump from train to train. But I really didn't like this because I wasn't able to sit back and appreciate the routes that I had set up. The graphics aren't that great either. The demo maps are pretty barren. It also doesn't seem like you can crash trains, which isn't the point but would be fun to do once in a while ala rollercoaster tycoon.

I won't play this again or buy the full version. The gameplay is tedious with not enought reward.

[Riproar]

"I downloaded it...The TAB key gives you a larger map of the entire layout which helps a lot. The interface also allows you to easily jump from train to train. But I really didn't like this because I wasn't able to sit back and appreciate the routes that I had set up. The graphics aren't that great either. The demo maps are pretty barren. It also doesn't seem like you can crash trains, which isn't the point but would be fun to do once in a while ala rollercoaster tycoon."
Very helpful Novacaine. Thank you for your synopsis.

I am what you might say, enamored with train sims. I'll be watching for this release.