:strip_icc()/pic2993110.jpg)
:strip_icc()/pic2974065.jpg)
But Age of Steam has several faults that I would have liked to remove if I were able to design a traditional train game:
• Building a network on a hex grid does not make sense, by which I mean that breaks the theme of building a rail network. All real city maps are printed on a square grid.
• The more you move a good in Age of Steam, the more money you earn — but there is no real reason to move a cube in a particular direction. For example, in real life if I want to go to the shop by train, I have a purpose for this; there is no particular thematic reason to move a blue cube to a blue city in Age of Steam.
• You gain the same income whether the link crosses one hex or five. In either case, you gain only 1, and that's unfair!
In 2011, I start designing a train game — Tramways — with these three ideas in mind.
/pic2993079.jpg)
As I had already designed tons of Age of Steam expansions, I thought that it would be a tough task to design an original and innovative new train game: "Ugh, there are so many good ones on the market..." In the meantime, I was developing my game Small City, which is basically a city-building game, so my first map for Tramways was my Small City maps — on a square grid, of course.
/pic2993082.jpg)
I wanted to link buildings, and thus where we have goods in Age of Steam, we have passengers in Tramways. They want to go shopping, relax in their homes, or head to work in a factory. For track segments, I cut only straight lines and curves. There were no actions, no auctions; it was just a pipeline game for fun.
/pic2993084.jpg)
/pic2993086.jpg)
/pic2993087.jpg)
On a grid, you can have only straight lines or curves, so you can connect to a single square in only four ways. I immediately thought that my grid was weaker than the hex maps, but I solved this issue by designing two-space rectangular buildings that had six ways to connect to them.
/pic2993088.jpg)
/pic2993089.jpg)
To make the game as simple as possible, I kept only two types of tiles (straight and curved), but allowed players to make a crossroads or to build two curves in opposite corners of the space immediately. After solving the topological issues of the conversion of the hex map into a 90° map, I started working on the aim of the game...
:strip_icc()/pic2993091.jpg)
First map of Tramways with Sampo's design
Because I was at this time also working on connecting citizens in Small City to "vote points", I felt that a kind of humanity was missing from my games. Why are we stockpiling victory points without any more interesting purposes? What do citizens or passengers really want in their lives? Why do they want to move?
I kept the idea of earning money when passengers move to a commerce tile, but money couldn't be the ultimate victory points. I needed something greater than this idea. What about happiness points then?
And that's how getting the most happiness points at the end of the game quickly became the goal of Tramways.
:strip_icc()/pic2993203.jpg)
Old graphic design of the cards
I noticed that to keep tension in a game, we absolutely need two important things:
• Something that keeps you from getting victory points.
• Something that increases the speed of the victory point engine so that players have the feeling of developing something during the game.
Thus, I needed some negative happiness points — and what greater enemy does happiness have in our lives than stress? That's why passengers who move to a factory increase a player's stress!
:strip_icc()/pic2993090.jpg)
Before printing the first prototype of Tramways in 2011, I divided the game into two halves, focused on increasing the speed of the game. In the first half of the game, the players get cards and during the second half of the game, they use them. The more cards they have, the more actions they can take...
:strip_icc()/pic2993206.jpg)
Tramways has always been a train game with cards, and these cards are represented as tickets, so handing in tickets to move passengers also feels thematic. Some cards have symbols that allow the players to take actions, but there are always different combinations of symbols on the cards, so you have to choose which symbols to play.
/pic2993210.jpg)
Stress symbol
If you want to take more actions with a single card, you can, but as you use more abilities on the same card, you have to increase your stress level. That's another tradeoff that players must keep in mind: You can use fewer cards if you are willing to accept some stress during the game.
:strip_icc()/pic2993141.jpg)
Tramways is a game with only three main actions, but each action is powerful and affects all players because everyone plays on the same map. Should you connect interesting areas to each other, upgrade old buildings, and build brand new lines to create new value in these buildings? Should you build long, expensive, but very beneficial lines, or short and inexpensive lines? When is it most appropriate to upgrade?
:strip_icc()/pic2993215.jpg)
Now, how will the players get the cards? I very much like auction systems, but I also think that it is an easy (too easy) way for a designer to balance the game when the designer wants to provide different abilities to the players. It's a nifty mechanism, but overused in so many games. That's why I had to design a completely innovative auction system that took me two years to devise...
:strip_icc()/pic2993093.jpg)
The winner of the auction gains stress; I think it makes sense that when you win the auction, you increase your stress because the other players focus their eyes on you and you have to make prompt decisions. I've lived through so many Age of Steam games in which I won the auction, paying more than $10, without even knowing which actions to select.
I also like the idea of the cumulative bids. Each time you bid in Tramways, you have to pay if you want to stay in the auction; you can pay with cash or with money symbols on your cards, but if you do the latter, you will have fewer cards, and thus fewer actions later in the game. Some cards have a negative effect that you cannot avoid when you play the card, so it's important to have as few of these as possible in your deck, lest they pollute it.
:strip_icc()/pic2993154.jpg)
In a traditional, route-building train game, position on the map is crucial, so maybe you bid high (even though the cards up for auction are not important) solely because you want to build first! Or maybe you want to avoid some cards/tickets with negative effects (called "consequences") in the game (like voided tickets)? There is always a good reason to bid or to not bid in Tramways.
So much stress! Is there no way to reduce your stress in this game? Easy! Just move passengers to their homes! Fine, good to know, but how do you get happiness points? Move passengers along your rail network; you will receive money from the bank, and the longer the line is, the more money you earn.
Lastly, if money is not the aim, what is money for in Tramways? To stay in the auctions and to get the best cards, but also to buy happiness when you link up leisure tiles.
To be consistent with my other games in the Small City universe, I kept the same "1+2+3+4..." mechanism, which works great here as well. For example, you could spend $15 at the Leisure building to get 5 happiness points all at once, or spend merely $6 to get 3 happiness points.
In the first prototypes of Tramways, our main issues were to balance the action symbols, specifically figuring out how many of each to have and deleting stupid actions. (In the first prototype, passengers could use a boat on a river...) Also, the ability to move passengers required a particular symbol that was present on very few cards, so it was difficult to move passengers and too easy to build — which is strange for a pick-up-and-deliver game. Thus, in 2012 I decided that all cards would be tickets and inherently have the ability to move passengers. Sampo suggested using a magnetic strip on all the cards, and of course I immediately approved because it was so thematic!
:strip_icc()/pic2993221.jpg)
In 2013, the game worked great, even if I disliked certain aspects such as some imbalanced actions (upgraded links and upgraded buildings). We also increased the replayability of the game by assembling the board like a puzzle; by printing on both sides, we could generate at least 64 maps for a four-player game. Around this time, I added a fifth player and reduced the number of spaces a little bit. Sampo made some really interesting graphics. Tramways still took place in the same modern era as Small City.
/pic2993114.jpg)
/pic2993104.jpg)
in 2014, CliniC and Small City took up all my time and I could not improve or develop Tramways as much as I would like, but the game was still played by several groups around the world, trying to balance the symbols and the money/happiness tempo. That said, I found some time to design a nice solo variant for the auction system, and I again reduced the number of spaces.
:strip_icc()/pic2993198.jpg)
New graphic design of the cards
At the beginning of 2015, Sampo introduced me to Paul Laane and we decided to make a prequel to Small City, placing Tramways one hundred years earlier. I love old-fashioned locomotives from the 1920s, and the art deco style was an obvious choice. We were of one mind with Paul for the cover, and when I saw his first sketch for the box cover, it was love at first sight.
:strip_icc()/pic2993201.jpg)
At the end of 2015, we returned to developing Tramways, modifying the aspects I disliked in 2013. We balanced all the actions, we fixed the number of cards and the hand limit, and we cleaned up the rules for the auctions, which were hard to write simply. (Thank you again, Nathan!)
:strip_icc()/pic2993106.jpg)
The last improvements were made March 16, 2016, when we changed the maps into modular boards with the two sides offering different difficulty levels. The possibilities are now endless and two games of Tramways won’t ever be the same. (Thank you, David, for this suggestion!)
:strip_icc()/pic2993098.jpg)
I hope I kept your attention and made you feel like you designed Tramways alongside me over the last five years. I did not work on it each month, but we found something interesting to improve each month, such as the different progress of the last round that increases the strategy part of the game, the +2 stress when you win the auction of the last round, the development of the hand limit of cards, the number of factories, the increase of stress in the commerce tile, the stress track with the Fibonacci sequence, the rail worker limitation, or finally, the powerful development cards that you can purchase in the commerce instead of taking more money: They have been refined again and again, using several action icons on the same card to optimize everything!
I think I managed to replace the ideal hex map with a tight and tense square grid. It makes more sense to me. Playing tickets to play actions is a great thematic addition to this pick-up-and-deliver game. The players can decide to move passengers to certain places to get special abilities, so the passengers now have a purpose again, and the theme has been improved: It is not just goods moving to abstract places. Building new buildings that have a square size makes more sense to me than building hex cities. And finally, the longer the link, the more you are paid by the bank. That makes sense with the theme of the game, a ticket to a faraway place costs more money than a ticket to the next stop.
Now it is time to design another game: What about solving a crime committed in Small City or burgling the commerce?
Alban Viard
/pic435842.jpg)
:strip_icc()/pic3012910.jpg)
:strip_icc()/pic2715302.jpg)
:strip_icc()/pic3007648.jpg)
/pic2943976.png)
