Chubway by Chubberdy (itch.io)
Nobody likes being crammed into a subway car, but people got places to be! People from the big city, with big waistlines, that need a little help figuring out exactly how they should be crammed. Arrange your passengers as best you can to keep their moods up, and try to keep them from missing their stop.
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Ok, so out of all the games from this Jam, (that I’ve played I’m about half way through at the time of writing this) this one is my favorite. Excellent gameplay loop that is fun and also addicting, with some good character designs for all of the different passengers. And I like the risk and reward when taking the lager passengers along instead of a bunch of smaller ones.
Here’s some feedback:
- The amount of score you receive for dropping off a passenger at the right stop feels too low, particularly for max size passengers that aren’t jogger and for passengers that have been around for 5 stops. I feel like this should be increased by a bit to help more with the later rounds, giving more reward for keeping subpar passengers around for longer, and to better sell the authentic subway experience (seriously these people are weirdly chill with missing their stops…)
- Speaking of jogger, out of all the passengers, she feels like the biggest liability to actually bring along with you. Unless she’s only going to be around for 1 stop, and you don’t have a dietitian around, she’s just not worth taking with causing point loss with everyone else aboard the subway and not having many ways to generate that many points herself. While I get that she’s mainly for comboing with the dietitian, if you don’t have one around, the points you get in however many stops she’s gonna be there for won’t help if you end up loosing on that stop. Giving her one or two more positive interactions with a different passenger (maybe with introvert or local?) would make her more useful to bring along.
- Some more quality of life features would be nice, mainly it being easier to fit characters onto nearly full car(maybe currently aboard passengers shuffle to make a spot for the one you’re gonna put in) a better way to gauge if you can fit a passenger in a car(maybe a weight limit displayed on the car with weights displayed on passengers along with their stop gauge) a way to quickly check all passenger’s moods on a button press, the option for faster panning with arrow keys/WASD, a quick drop off button for passengers at their stop, and the option for a faster score tally on a button press would make the game just that bit better.
- Over scoring (I don’t know whats its actually called but its when you go over the requirement and gain a head start on the next stop) doesn’t seem to be working correctly if you score more than double the original goal. Rather that than the total amount over going to your score for the next round, it will instead take what ever amount is above that and use it instead (like for example you need to score 100 points for that stop, you score 230 points and you go into the next stop with only 30 points already there not 130, I think this is how this mechanic works anyway) I can’t tell if this is a bug or a way to stop the player from making a huge score buffer, but right now it forces you to play for more mediocre scores to never lose out on that buffer, if it was gone it would mean doing really well on one stop wouldn’t go to waste.
- Speaking of score, it would be nice if the highscore was a proper highscore that you accumulate over the course of a run rather than the highest score for one stop, also a place where both your highest score and furthest stop you reach on the main menu would be pretty nice.
- One way interactions (like having a executive next to a worker or a tourist next to a local) feels not really worth doing right now, the points you gain are pretty small when you factor in the pointloss from putting the two together which is really unfortunate for exec. because otherwise she has pretty poor point gain and is mostly used for combo-ing with other social passangers when nobody else is available. Increasing the point gain from one way interactions, and also some other detriment to keep it from being an always good option (Like, the passanger with the negative modifier would have would add a bit more verity to runs. (also i would really like to see exec buffed to make her more useful please and thank you.)
- Finally there’s the big problem of the mid 20’s wall that nobody has been able to pass. I think this is due to the both the overscore problem and the score requirement scaling more that it is consistently possible to beat without crazy luck. lowering the scaling and or adding the fixes to overrscoring and passenger drop off score would help pass this (assuming this isn’t intentional).
That about covers any issues I can think of at the moment, most of these were from version 0.1.0 so if 0.1.2 fixed any of them then ignore that part of the post.
I really like this game, and I hope it gets worked on more post jam!
Here are some post jam ideas that are more than more sizes and passenger types(even though I would love the latter):
- An alternate game mode where instead of trying to beat a score quota that rises every stop, you instead have a much larger quota to meet over the course of several stops, like for example 5-8 stops per quota, or something to that effect. That way, trying to go for set ups with big payoffs that start slow would be much more viable.
- Some more station variations, currently its just station 01 over and over again. There could be some additional details around the stop, like some benches/seats of all sizes lining the walls, posters, advertisements, oversized and overstuffed snack machines, maps of the city and the subway route, graffiti, you know stuff inside these stops to give them a bit more flavor.
- Some dialogue barks for the passengers, commenting about their current mood/passengers they’re next to/their location on the train (if they’re a passenger type that cares about that). It would be a bit of work to write all of that dialog but it would help give the passengers just that bit more personality between all the passenger archetypes.
- Finally there’s the big one: Items. Items (which are conceptually small mundane items given out by the subway staff for passengers); they’re basically modifiers you can to passengers to change how they interact with other passengers or some aid to make that particular stop easier to pass the score quota. Like for example: a stress toy that reduces the negative points gained for the passenger that you give it to, a one size fits all girdle that forces a larger passenger to be once size smaller than they are but they take a small hit to their scoring that gets worse the more back to back stops they have to wear it, a pocket guide to speaking which makes a passenger act as a “social” character and boosts the score output of social passengers, noise canceling headphones that work similarly to the pocket guide but for antisocial passengers instead.
- You’d be able to buy these in between stops from a randomized pool that may or may not be weighted by how useful the item would be, via a currency that is either gained based upon your score, or are gained at a set rate on a station by station basis. You could only hold a limited number of items (like say 5-7ish) but they would also be limited in the amount of times they could be used before they break (maybe 3 used per item) and they would be returned to you if a passenger who was holding one got off at their stop. That way there would be a good balance of not using items wastefully but also not holding onto them until the end of time.
EDIT: New feedback and also some ideas for post jam stuff that is LONG overdue.
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Not a review, but saw this most definitely scam link under this game. Don’t click it people!
Links gone
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Hmm the mid 20’s did not give me an issue, blew right past. Although that may chalk up to rng of what passengers i had aboard and what passengers i took on.
Station 27 seems nigh impossible to get past. It may be related to the score system described above, but even on the luckiest runs, I’ve fallen as few as <100 points short of passing Station 27 each time. It’s a great little puzzle game, just marred a bit by what seems to be a “thou shalt not pass” wall in something that seems set up to be playable just about indefinitely.
Congratulations; this game is our GET LARGE Jam 1st place winner!
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