If you like the subway system, then you are going to love this game. Trains just fascinate me, I just love everything about them, not just the trains themselves, but the routes, the systems, the lines and tracks, everything about trains. So when I found out that there was a game that’s simple where you just lay down lines and stuff, I thought it was too good to be true. The game is very simplistic, there’s no actual trains, stations, tracks, people, and you don’t even put stations, the game randomly puts down stations for you, and you put down lines connecting the stations, which resemble the lines, and then you watch as little boxes that represent trains travel between the stations, picking people up and dropping them off. It’s all the fun of trains, while at the same time, a building and tycoon game and I love it for that.

GRAPHICS: 7/10

The graphics are literally as simple as they can get. You have a white background with blue lines that represent rivers, and you get plain shapes that represent stations. Then you get to put down different lines, with each route a different color, and that’s all there is to it. There’s literally nothing else to it, even the animaitions of the trains moving are as simple as they can be, but the game looks clean and good.

SOUND: 6/10

When it comes to the sound, it’s much like the graphics and are very simple, mainly because the sound isn’t something that the game wants you to pay attention to, it just wants you to play. For the sound, you have the regular sound effects and the music. The music, is in the form of this one gentle song that plays while you play the game, and honestly, it’s right down the middle in terms of greatness, it’s not good but it’s not bad either. As for the sound effects, there aren’t that many, whenever you click on something, or lay down some tracks, you hear a little noise, that mainly gets louder each time you do it, and that’s about all there is in terms of the sounds.

ADDICTIVENESS: 10/10

The game is so much fun, there’s the normal challenge mode where you have to connect lines to stations, and you have to try to make sure that stations don’t overcrowd or the game will end. You also have endless mode where stations don’t overcrowd and you can never lose. Now, you don’t have full free will because you can only place the lines down where the game places stations, but outside of that it’s all up to you, you can create your very own subway system, and who doesn’t want to do that? You can mix and match what lines go where, how many lines stop at a station, how many trains there are in one route, and a lot more. You’re basically an architect for a subway system and you get to design it however way you want. If you like any kind of planning and building game, then this will be a lot of fun.

STORY: N/A

Sorry, but if you were hoping that this was the kind of game where maybe you bid on contracts to build the trains, or there’s some sort of a story behind the cities or the systems, then you are going to be disappointed to hear that none of that is in this game. It’s very straightforward in what the game is about, it’s JUST putting down lines. You get to do this in a variety of different big cities, but there’s really no meaning to why you’re doing it. For all we know, you could be a power hungry politician who just wants to keep building and destroying the subway system to see what happens.

DEPTH: 8/10

The game does have a lot of depth. First, you have the number of cities that you can play in, which is an even dozen, and you have a couple of game modes and such, for instance there’s the regular challenges and endless mode that I already mentioned, but beyond that you also have Daily Challenges which pick a random city and mode to beat and you only have that day to beat the challenge. Aside for that, the rest of the depth is within the building aspect of the game, you have a large collection of lines, tunnels, stations, and intersections that you unlock as the weeks pass by and you can use them to make your system more passenger friendly.

DIFFICULTY: 8

The game can be tough, especially if you aren’t playing in endless mode because one mistake can result in you losing. Making one line just one station too long could result in a train taking too long to do the entire route, which in turn means longer wait times in each of those stations, which would mean overcrowding, which would mean DEATH! After every week, you get the option to unlock something, but you have to choose whether you want things like an extra route, an extra train, and extra car for a train, bridges and tunnels, so if you don’t carefully come up with a layout, your system can be ruined. Maybe you will have a station off on an island, but because you don’t have any more bridges or tunnels, you can’t get a train there, so you watch hopelessly as the station gets overcrowded. The game can get hard if you don’t know what you are doing, so you need to be very careful.

OVERALL: 8.1/10

Fans of design and building games will love this, as will fans of trains. It’s easy to get lost in a game, especially in endless mode, and let the hours pass by as you make your systems more complex and intricate. It’s a very fun game, and it’s cheap as well, $10 for hours of fun, and it’s already ben included as part of a bundle before, so who knows, maybe you have it already. If you have it, or could get it, I suggest giving it a try because it’s a pretty good game and my overall grade for Mini Metro is going to be an 8.1 out of 10.

zanderlex : So this looks like a train game. I don't think I have ever played a train game before. I should try maybe one day. Thanks zander for reminding me of this. I think I was going to get into a train game and find one but I forgot too. So thank you for doing this review. I look forward to your next one.