Posted in: Games, Indie Games, Video Games | Tagged: preview, Public Transit, simulator, Transport Fever 3, Urban Games

How Hard Can Bus Planning Be? We Got To Preview Transport Fever 3

We were brough out to New York City to try out a demo of Transport Fever 3, as we messed with the new campaign mode and sandbox mode

A couple of weeks ago, Urban Games were kind enough to bring us out for a special event to try out their latest game, Transport Fever 3. The team brought us out to New York City for a special demo event where we got to check out the game, learn more about public transit, and even took a short helicopter trip over Manhattan. And as much fun as all that was, our main focus was on being able to play an early build of the game with a couple of levels with different types of challenges. Here's our rundown of what we got to experience.

Learning The Ways of Transit Management in Transport Fever 3 Across Any Decade

So let's start with the premise of Transport Fever 3. This edition of the game tells a story over time, as you'll experience different kinds of situations and watch public transit evolve through the decades in a single-playuer campaign. In the part of the game we played, we got to view life through the eyes of a young man who grew over time, learning the ways of transportation logistics and how they can be used to improve things for everyone who needs to get around. The journey started us in New Orleans just before the turn of the century, as we were put in charge of figuring out how to get supplies to a building yard, food to the local hotel, and people to the Marti Grad event happening that weekend.

The New Campaign Mode

Every chapter in the campaign acted as a tutorial of sorts, guiding you from the basics all the way to the complex. In New Orleans, we were taught about delivery services and how best to choose the right vehicle to get them around, while also learning how to plot routes and get those vehicles to take a path or get into the rhythm of a route. We also learned to make sure the routes you plan work and don't end up in a loop where they just wander back and forth, not completing tasks. It's a very different approach from the previous two games, but it works in that it makes you think about what you're doing with a goal in mind beyond the simplicity of just being told to build a train route somewhere.

New Tasks and Logistics Mean More To Learn

Some of the bigger factors of Transport Fever 3 that need your undivided attention are cargo, storage, and resource management. For example, the second mission we played had us working to set up a music festival outside a major city in the 1960s, which required a lot of work to make happen. This included setting up a stage (which we needed to buy supplies for and have a truck go pick them up for delivery), aas well as a supply of food being sent to the campgrounds for those working on it, and the unfortunate task of waste management.

The last of which caused several headaches as we bought a truck to dump it all in a river, got caught by the sheriff, and then had to buy different trucks to haul it to a waste disposal plant. Then people got sick, and we needed to buy medicine and get new trucks to bring it in. All of which caused major traffic issues, so we then needed to navigate to bring some relief to the area. That may sound like a lot, but it was crucial to go through to learn those steps for when they come up in other modes of gameplay. So if you're a first-time player, this will get you learning everything by necessity.

Not Everything Runs On Time

Some of the issues I personally ran into were dealing with making sure that vehicles complete their tasks and don't just do a one-off run. Those of us who play games of automation are probably used to the idea that if you tell a car to go from point A to point B and back, it will do that automatically. In Transport Fever 3, you get full control, and in some cases, too much control, as sometimes things just don't automate the way you want them to. For example, I told a ship to pick up supplies of fish from a spot in the ocean and bring them back to be picked up by a truck. I thought I had given it all the right commands to do so, but upon closer inspection, I was missing a few key commands that I failed to put in. Sometimes it feels like I'm fighting with both the CPU and myself for not doing the thing I expected it to do automatically.

Playing in a Sandbox Where You Control Traffic

We tried out the sandbox mode for a while, and this is where having all that control really shines, as you have far more access to things here than you ever did in the past. For example: If I build a road, and I say its a one-way street, it will be a one-way street. No more forcing me to make everything complete and uniform. What's more, a lot of the systems have phases built into them. When working with trans, I discovered phases in which tracks would switch at certain times if multiple lines were on a single rail. Which led to the idea of making it so certain lines ran at certain times so we wouldn't need to switch the track as often, making it more streamlined.

Another player was messing with buses when a developer showed them how to mess with the traffic light system, as you can set a schedule of phases to account for major roadways, light-traffic hours, pedestrian crossings, inner-city train schedules, and other systems. It seems the developers decided to go all-out with this one and make sure you had complete control in Sandbox mode.  Which has been greatly inproved in many ways to let you mess with the terrain and design of the world around you as you lay in roads and railways.

Overall, I really enjoyed my time with the Transport Fever 3 demo. It has a lot going for it that will keep even the most diehard simulator fans occupied as they attempt to perfect the system in whatever scenario they find themselves in. Taking the game through different eras was a clever way to not only show the difficulties and challenges that people faced in different eras to get around, but also showcased many of the advances in technology that we take for granted across the board. It will be interesting to see what the final version of the game looks like when it comes out, which, at the moment, the team is aiming for sometime before the end of 2026.

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