Reviewed and available exclusively on PC
Cities in Motion tasks players with plotting and managing public transportation routes through sprawling urban settlements. In simple terms, people need to get from point A to B, and it is your job to make it as quick and easy as possible. What sounds like a relatively simple gameplay premise is actually frighteningly complex and challenging.
Players have very little control over building placement, and no control over road placement. The foundations are laid out in the beginning, and it is your job to fit a transportation blueprint over them that is efficient and profitable.
Players are introduced to the game via a friendly tutorial which really does a great job of explaining how everything works. For starters, you will want to identify residential areas in relation to business and comercial areas. You will also want to consider places of interest such as tourist destinations, and buildings such as churches, schools, hospitals and so on. You can guarantee that there will be demand for public transport connecting these areas to each other. Fortunatly, the interface is quite smart, and it is easy to determine exactly where these areas are thanks to a colour coding scheme.
Once you have an idea of which areas you would like to connect, you can set about laying down bus stops connecting the various locations. You will then create a bus line by connecting the bus stops to each other, and finally, you will add as many buses as you want to the line before setting it in motion. It’s a slick and intuative system, which is important in games of this nature.
Once you have created your first line, you can set about connecting other lines to it. This is as simple as creating a line with a stop which is within walking distance of a stop that is part of the first line. Walking distance is indicated by a large circle which surrounds a stop when you select it. Citizens are then able to work out which lines to take to get to their desired location, and are able to change lines multiple times to get to their final destination.
Of course, you are not limited to buses, and you can also create tram lines as well as underground and above-ground subway lines, as well as ferries and helicopters.
While it all sounds pretty straightforward, Cities in Motion is one of the most challenging games I have ever played. Things usually start well, but your system will be faced with numerous challenges which can make it difficult to keep customers happy, and cash flowing in. For example, traffic jams can slow down your lines significantly, causing massive amounts of customers to be kept waiting at your stops. This negatively affects your reputation score, and of course a congested bus line cannot be profitable as it’s passenger turnover rate will simply not be high enough to cover energy and staff costs.
It is common to quickly amass large amounts of unhappy customers at your stops when your line is not functioning efficiently. A seemingly sensible solution is to add more buses, however, this only adds to the congestion and makes the line even more expensive to run. Therefore, it is really important to consider exactly where you place stops, and plot routes. It makes sense to avoid busy roads, and trams are even able to pass through parks or pathways, circumventing traffic problems to a large degree.
Unfortunately, even with clever planning, it is very difficult to maintain a route which is profitable, and does not gather large unhappy crowds at its busier stops. This makes for a rather frustrating experience at times. Your buses and trams often begin to form part of the congestion which plagues your city’s streets, and it quickly becomes apparent why in real life we have bus lanes – a feature which is sadly omitted from Cities in Motion that could have made things a lot easier. In fairness, these difficulties make it that much sweeter when you do actually get a line running efficiently – a rare feat.
On top of basic route planning and maintenance, are additional options such as choosing ride fares, and deciding how much to pay your drivers and technicians. Obviously how much you pay your employees will effect their performance. Tip: it is always worth paying them well, as the resulting break downs and accidents which occur from unhappy drivers and mechanics is just not worth the minor cash saving.
There is even a broader world economy to consider which will affect how much citizens are willing to pay to use public transport, as well as how much your employees expect to be paid, and even how much you can buy and sell vehicles for.
It is even possible to run advertising campaigns, and target specific demographics depending on your chosen medium. For instance, students will respond well to TV adds, while the elderly might respond better to newspaper promotions. The interface has a built in indicator which tells you what various portions of the population think of your company. In practice, however, this becomes irrelevant, as you will very soon have more people clamouring to use your lines than you can effectively accommodate.
Strangely, all the unforgiving difficulty that comes with the bus and tram system is systematically eradicated with the introduction of underground trains. While ridiculously expensive to build, subway systems can be so efficient that you might be left wondering why you bothered with any other transport system in the first place. I found that taking out a massive loan in the beginning, and then bypassing buses and trams and going straight to the underground system actually worked out more efficient and profitable in the long run. Some might argue that the game is therefore unbalanced, but after hours of precision tweaking of overland systems, being able to easily create a system which can accommodate large crowds and easily turn a profit is extremely refreshing. Also, it’s probably a fairly accurate reflection of just how powerful underground train systems are in modern day public transport.
Despite its infuriating difficulty at times, Cities in Motion’s basic game design makes for something which is highly addictive, compelling and rewarding. It is also wrapped up in a gorgeously rendered exterior. You will marvel at the level of detail on display, and the sound effects hit all the right notes, will ambient background music and crisp sound effects constantly massaging your ears.
There are 12 different scenarios. This does not sound like a lot, but one could easily spend 10-20 hours on each. Sadly, there are only only four city choices: Vienna, Helsinki, Berlin and Amsterdam. However, when one considers that each city has been painstakingly recreated in utmost detail, we can easily forgive this shortcoming. Also, there is an advanced map editor which dedicated enthusiasts can get stuck into.
Cities is Motion is an appealing package for simulation/managment fans. More detail could have gone into some of the transportation logistics which might have made the game a bit easier, such as bus time tables, bus lanes, and different bus fares for different routes. As it is, busses become encumbered in street traffic, and are unable to complete routes in consistent time frames, meaning they cannot be profitable. Also, customers will pay a flat fee per trip, with no regard for how far they are being transported. These, however, are relatively petty annoyances, and can be overlooked in the name of good gameplay.
A more serious problem I experienced was the game’s tendency toward being unstable. Cities in Motion will occasionally, and inexplicably, crash to the Windows desktop. This is extremely frustrating when it has been a few hours since your last save and you were just getting your lines working nicely. The game also begins to chug a bit after a while of playing, indicating possible memory leaks due to poorly optimised code. You will need a fairly decent PC to get the best out the game, as it draws heavily on CPU, RAM and GPU resources.
Cities in Motion retails on Steam for a refreshingly low price of $19.99 (±R140), making it fantastic value for money despite its shortcomings. I would hope that developer Colossal Order continues to support the game with patches and updates, because with some tweaking, we could be sitting with a real classic.
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