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A fun, casual, city building games that focus on economics more than battles, from the folks at Game Insight.
Transport Empire is Game Insight¹s newest city builder. This game is a free-to-play economic-strategy game where you must build and manage your own major transportation network. The game is currently free and available for the iPad. Overall it is not a bad but can be a bit slow at times.
If you are familiar with Tribez, then the general menu layout might look a bit familiar. This is not a bad thing, as I like how the game is setup. You will start off with a small tutorial to help you get started. The first thing you will notice is that most of the game is covered in clouds- you will need to advance to open up new regions. Your main mode of transportation is trains, part of your job is to create routes between resources and cities. As you open up new areas, you will also get new means of transportation, such as boats and airships. Within each city you will find a station, resident district, administration, and factory. Each of these will help you grow your empire:
factory- processes ore, can be upgraded
administration- level of city, taxes collected
residential district – general size of city for growth
station- upgrade to allow multiple trains at one time
As with most city builder games, you will be presented quests to do with many focused around a story line. As you gather more resources, you will be able to upgrade almost any item in the game. One thing I found is that any major upgrade or quest, took some time. Now you can always speed up these activities. I have done so for a few but in general I wait. By doing this, Transport Empire becomes a game that I play for a few minutes, setup up quests, go do something, and then come back to the game. Personally I enjoy playing like this vs sitting down for hours at at time.
Regarding speeding up activities, I noticed that different quests required different payment which is interesting. The game does come with in-app purchase capabilities but so far I have not needed to do and have been able to “pay my own way”.
The graphics and game play are well done and this is one game that I plan to play for a while. I am curious to see how it develops. The final note I will make about the game is that there is a ton to do in the game. Some of the things you need to do are:
- build routes, buildings, and resources
- fulfill various quests
- maintain your city’s reputation
- upgrade your city’s administration
- and more….
If you enjoy casual, city building games, that focus on economics more than battles, download Transport Empire and see if you can become a rail tycoon.
[Update: after playing the game for a while, I would still say it is fun but can be a bit frustrating. You will find you will need multiple resources for one task and that takes time to get, unless you are playing constantly or want to spend some in game currency and or real money. ]
