Trainyard is a puzzle app for the iPhone and iPod touch. The hallmark of a great puzzle is a set of rules that can be expressed in a couple of lines, increasingly complex logic, and a pleasant intuitive mechanism. Trainyard ticks all the boxes.
It is not a “train simulator” like Railroad Tycoon. Rather it is a fascinating logic puzzle that requires thinking about networks, binary switching and, oddly enough, colour. The game is played out on a 7x7 grid. In each layout there will be at least one starting station. Each train has a colour. Somewhere on the grid will be a destination, also showing a colour. The aim is to lay tracks to get the right colour train into the correct destination. So far so easy.
The grid can be constrained with “rocks”. More challenging, you may find you need to include track switching. This can be set with an initial condition (eg straight ahead or diverting), but after that will “switch” each time a train passes over it. When you run the puzzle you cannot control the trains directly. All trains must get to their correct, colour coded destination.
Hard enough? Not quite, so now we introduce collisions, painters and splitters. Trains that come onto a track at the same time and same direction combine. Trains that “hit” in opposite directions will pass each other. In both cases a new colour will result. A “painter” is a block that paints a train a set colour. A splitter will take a primary colour train and make two of them, or a secondary colour train and make one of each combining colour.
Now let the fun begin! The interface is very intuitive. The trains in “run” mode can go at variable speeds so you can quickly test a setup or slowly watch a complex plan. The solutions are not always obvious, and there can be more or less efficient ways to solve a layout.
Highly recommended for all ages... check out the app store or www.trainyard.ca. Not bad for a game built in Matt Rix’s spare time!
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