A-Train can be difficult for newcomers to the series, but please stick with it. It's a rail conglomerate sim which includes time table scheduling and urban development (based on the Japanese Rail Conglomerate business model) A-Train is also a very open-ended game - a concept that some gamers have struggled with. You'll spend hours experimenting with tracks and trains, purchasing and placing businesses to fund rail expansion and coordinating time tables to maximise profit.
It isn't strictly a 'numbers game' like many city development sims, where every influencing value is known and can be manipulated to create a desired effect. Rather, the core relationships between the many values in A-Train have remained something of a mystery. The instruction manual provided with the game gives away very little. It's never been entirely clear how, say, your Stock Market purchases might influence the economy, or how your many constructions and businesses might influence population numbers.
The overall atmosphere is very Japanese! The buildings, the trains, the mountainous landscapes - the incidental music with the start of every new month.
A question I have heard on a number of occasions: "How is A-Train played and is it like other similar-looking games that I have tried in the past?"
To begin with, some people thought that A-Train was a close relative of SimCity. In fact, the early A8 press release stated that you assume the position of Town Mayor (a 'SimCity' role). They were trying to pitch the game as a familiar concept but all they did was add to the confusion.
In A-Train you are, first and foremost, the head of a Japanese rail conglomerate. Your ultimate goal is to make this business profitable. You will expand your conglomerate through real estate purchase and sale (buy low/sell high). There are Market shares to buy/sell as well as train schedules to organise (taking advantage of the busiest commuter periods). So, you see, A-Train has several levels of appeal in addition to the opportunity of having authentically-modeled Japanese trains at your disposal.
A-Train 8/HX are typically started from one of the included scenarios, a user-made scenario or a blank map - your goal will be the same regardless: Make one trillion in funds to clear the map. But making a trillion, even on ★ ★ ★, doesn't present a significant challenge (you'll be surprised at how easy it is to achieve). However, I don't know anyone who only plays scenarios until the 1 trillion glass roof and then quits.
The general flow of the game goes like this: Passengers and Materials make everything else happen - you must relieve the passengers of their money (to further invest in your company), and Materials enable just about everything to be constructed. If either becomes scarce then your city will begin to stagnate right where it is. So, initially you connect two stations with a track, purchase a Factory (which produces Materials) and have those Materials delivered to both stations on a Goods Train.
Each of the main building types in A-Train will attract passengers at specific times - Hotels, Shops, ski slopes, whatever - they all have an associated peak time during which the highest number of passengers will catch your trains. In the early game you'll probably want to establish some commuter traffic. Thus you'd construct a few Houses or Flats at one station, and Offices at the other. Then use Passenger trains, and careful time tabling, to transport the people from home to office and back again.
Immediately you'll notice the region (I'm careful not to use the word 'zone' here - more on that in a minute) around the stations changing colour, indicating development. With a steady supply of Materials each region should see buildings randomly appear. Your trains will start to turn a profit, but not quite enough for you to expand any further....
Owning a train company is a supremely expensive business. Stations, trains and track all cost lots of money. Another thing about running a business is that you need always invest for the future: There's no point in building a single-platform country station and expecting it to reap ever increasing returns into your bank account. Very soon you'll find it simply can't accommodate any more travelers - meaning your profit level has capped.
So why not go ahead and purchase a 3-platform Elevated Station instead? Sure, it's designed to cope with more people than are living around the station at present, but development is constant (given the right conditions). Before you realise it you'll exceed the capacity even of this station. Then you'll be looking to expand again. And so on.
Where do you get the money for all this expansion? Well, you might like to borrow from the bank. In fact, you'll find that you have no choice but to. In the late game you'll be borrowing disgusting amounts of money and wondering if you can even afford the interest.
There's also the Stock Market (with, in A8, jarring Euro-names). Purchase your shares, as many as you want, then wait for the prices to rise.
You will also want to expand your conglomerate by branching into other business fields. These Shops, Hotels, Department Stores and Cinemas will be the Subsidiaries of your Train Company, existing solely to be exploited. They make a tidy profit for most of the time, but in healthy developing areas, you'll notice their value increases dramatically. Founding and selling-on these Subs is another major feature of the finance game in A-Train.
Does it matter where I place buildings? Yes, it does. I mentioned earlier that I avoid using the phrase 'zone' in describing the areas around rail stations. Zoning is another feature of SimCity - wherein residential, industrial and commercial zones are created. A-Train buildings needn't be grouped in such a way, but most of your Subs will want to be as close to the station as possible as this is the region of fastest development and highest land pricing. For reasons of practicality, too, customers won't want to travel far from the station to spend their money.
In a nutshell that's the gameplay of A-Train. The pace is relaxed. The finance management is accessible; the city building is creative and fun.
Who will A-Train most appeal to?
Clearly if you've ever stood on a station platform (particularly a Japanese one) and felt a sense of awe, admiration or fear for those steel wonders, then you might get a kick out of A-Train 8 or HX; those gamers who like to fiddle and tweak (don't we all); someone with time to invest and a creative leaning, perhaps? Finally, it will appeal to gamers who enjoy management sims since, at it's heart, this is exactly what A-Train is - a deceptively complex train conglomerate management simulation.
I heard this game is insanely complicated and, like, the manual is useless. What gives?
I'll not gloss over the fact that the manual, especially the A-Train HX paper manual, was functional and dry. It did nothing to help ease the newcomer into the game. Thing is, most of us have never played a game like A-Train before. It looks like certain other games but doesn't share their mechanics and so it helps if we unlearn what we knew, let go our expectations and prepare for something new.