Title: STATIONflow Original Soundtrack. Developer: DMM GAMES. Publisher: DMM GAMES. Release Date: Feb 26, 2020. View update history Read related news Find Community. STATIONflow Review: Become The Commuter Commander. The premise of STATIONflow definitely doesn't scream fun, but fans of sim/management games will find a lot to love. Developed by DMM Games, the same team behind 2018’s Gal Metal, STATIONFlow is a decidedly different game for the Japanese indie Studio. Instead of taking on aliens with the power of a rhythm-based drumming ditty, Station Flow ditches the highschool RPG for something a bit more grown-up.
| Title | STATIONflow |
|---|---|
| Developer | DMM Games |
| Publisher | DMM Games |
| Release Date | April 15th, 2020 |
| Genre | Simulation, Strategy |
| Platform | PC (Steam) |
| Age Rating | N/A |
| Official Website | |
STATIONflow is an indie game about building an underground train station. As your station grows, you’ll have more train platforms and entrances funneling more and more travelers through your corridors. As your station rank increases, you’ll have to deal with new needs that your passengers develop, and build new areas in your station to satisfy them. Keeping all of those little virtual people happy is very important, unless you like being bankrupt! How long can you keep your station running successfully?
This is a standard station platform. There is also a split variant, where the two rail lines run down the middle, rather than along the outside edges.
Early on, your main goal in STATIONflow is to connect all entrances to the initial train platform so travelers can get where they need to go. You can see above that there are two rail lines in a station platform, in this case lines P1 and P2. Then you’ll need to add some directional signs at intersections and must set them up to tell the travelers how to navigate your station. You can copy and paste settings from one directional sign to another with a pair of shortcut keys, which is super handy later when your station is much bigger. Once you get things set up, the money will start rolling in.
Contraption maker download free. The two red entrances to the left are connected to the next floor above by stairs, as is the train platform to the right.
As time passes and your station rank increases, you’ll periodically unlock more things to build. This includes escalators and elevators. There are also special rooms you can build as your guests develop new needs. Very early in the game, the first needs you’ll have to start dealing with are hunger and thirst. Later on you’ll have to add ticket booths, as passengers getting off one train and going to another one at a different platform will need to get a ticket first. You’ll also eventually need to deal with elderly guests who need escalators or elevators, and handicapped travelers who require elevators. These aren’t the only obstacles that await a growing station, though.
Later in my station’s life, some corridors were becoming pretty crowded.
Stationflow Download
STATIONflow doesn’t just give you more to worry about in terms of passenger needs and facilities in your station. As the game gives you more entrances and train platforms to contend with, you’ll have ever more virtual little people in their colorful outfits running around in your creation. Some of your corridors will inevitably become crowded and they will start running into each other and getting clogged up a bit. You can plan ahead for some of this by building wider corridors. Stairs come in several sizes, while corridors can be built more free-form. One place in particular where you will be likely to see traffic jams is at your stairs/escalator/elevator areas. You may need to build more of these in the area to allow for more passengers to get through at a time as the station expands.
Here we see several directional signs, and each elevator/stair/escalator has its own pair of directional signs at the top and bottom.
Some of the icons in the images may look a bit confusing, but they’re not at all. The yellow boxes are the contents you’ve set in directional signs, and you can toggle HUD overlays on/off by categories. Each stairway/escalator/elevator has its own built-in pair of directional signs (at the top and bottom). These signs can also guide people to facilities like food, drink, bathrooms, etc. A letter in a circle refers to a train station. An icon that looks like a letter on a door refers to an entrance. In either case, it may also have a number after it to refer to a specific one in a set. For example, entrance A2. If the sign just has A with no number, then it tells your passengers that all entrances in group A are in this direction. Stations can also have a number. P1 would refer to the first rail line at station P. In the image above, there are three train stations (P, Q, and R), which you can see on the HUD on the right.
Escalators are nice, but the drawback is that they are single-file.
The HUD in STATIONflow also shows your station rank, number of active rail lines and entrances (you can enable/disable them at will), your money, number of passengers in the station and their happiness. You get a summary at the end of each in-game day that shows how you did budget-wise, and in other ways like happiness level and daily rating. Some HUD elements can be clicked on for more detailed information, like your budget. You can also take out loans if you get into some financial troubles. Various facilities have upkeep costs, and may be a net drain on your budget. As your station grows and reaches higher ranks, you have to be more careful with placing more facilities, as they get more expensive to build and run. You can run your finances off a cliff into the red easily if you’re not careful! Trust me, my first station went bankrupt at station rank 16. Healthcare facilities are expensive!
Barotrauma alpha download. Oftentimes the entrances in a given set are not all on the same floor. This makes them a touch trickier to connect to the rest of your station.
The gameplay of STATIONflow is fun, though certain aspects of it can be a bit tedious on occasion (like managing directional signs in larger stations). Other times it may seem all heck breaks loose, as lots of people in your station start getting bent out of shape about some problem all at once unexpectedly! Then you need to figure out what’s going on. Oftentimes this is because you messed up a directional sign so people can’t figure out how to get to their destination, which makes them understandably cranky! You can pause time if you need to, and there are three speeds you can set it at when it’s not paused. Navigating the station is very quick and easy. You can use the F and C keys to jump up or down a floor, and pan/rotate with the mouse. You can also click on the HUD to do so, but who wants to do that? Another minor gameplay issue is that during construction corridors do odd things sometimes, like snapping where you don’t want them to.
Things like elevators have a GUI you can open during construction. It can change the direction of stairs/escalators/elevators for example.
STATIONflow has a very nice soundtrack that is upbeat and relaxing, while fitting the game very well. The sound effects are also well done and bring the world to life a bit more (especially since the graphics are on the minimalist side, though that’s not a bad thing).
STATIONflow also has a level editor with Steam Workshop support so players can make their own maps to play on.
STATIONflow is a fun little indie game that can keep you entertained for a lot of time. While the game comes with seven maps to play on, there is also a level editor so you can make your own maps. These can also be uploaded to Steam Workshop for others to play. The tutorial level is really only a tutorial early on, and then plays like a normal level after that. You can easily spend lots of hours on one station, so there’s more gameplay there than you may think. It also depends on how you play. For example, it’s affected by which time speed you prefer to have the simulation on and how well you run your station. It is an open-ended simulation game after all, not a win/lose kind of thing. The level editor and player-generated content can add infinite playtime as well.

Just realize this is not the most polished game in existence. It’s just a bit rough around the edges as I mentioned. I ran my station for a little over 15 hours until it unfortunately went bankrupt! This is a game over for you if that happens, but you can always jump back to one of your recent saves and try to rescue your station from reaching that fate again. STATIONflow is available on Steam for $17.99, and the soundtrack is also available to purchase if you wish. Can you juggle facilities and keep all of your guests happy to run a successful underground station?
Review copy provided by publisher.
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Simulation games can be a mixed bag. They tend to offer a mix of addictive gameplay, elaborate micromanagement, and complex UI systems that demand some patience. DMM Games’ STATIONflow is more-or-less in line with these traits. The result is a romp that can be tough to get into but eventually takes hold, kicking into high gear as things begin to click. It really can be rewarding watching the cash roll in whilst examining the hundreds of basic polygonal figures buzzing through your active train station. Still - a few ambiguities, simple presentation, and occasional monotonous tasks hold STATIONflow back from real greatness.
STATIONflow boils down to managing the operation of an increasingly bustling train/subway station. This mainly amounts to slapping down a series pathways, stairs, elevators, and signs to guide wandering workers and tourists to their destination. Basically, you’ll need to keep people happy, maintain a nice cash flow, and unlock new items/features. And so goes the typical sim quality of growth and progression cycles. These actions may sound simple, but after fumbling with webs of a few dozen corridors, 6 train stops, and 15 stairwells, things can get hectic rather quick. This can feel especially anxiety-inducing given the limited window of the ticking clock, and an end-of-day letter grade evaluation.
While the overall experience proves fun and addictive, there’s a feeling of repetition involved in some of the construction that quickly becomes apparent. This mainly stems from the abundance of laying down signs and filling in their details. People will be flowing through multiple pre-constructed entrances/exits during the day, reaching a fever pitch during rush hour. They must all be navigated to various trains - and often secondary spots like ticket booths, bathrooms, and vendors. This is achieved with a combination of convenient, accessible hallways and clear-cut signs.
The sign feature is worth highlighting, as it’s a major part of the game. These take the form of multidirectional arrows, which allow you to enter destinations that they point to. For instance, a corridor split leading to “A1” and “A3” exits should have an arrow at that split tagged with those codes. This is fine in the short-term, but after several days of increasing traffic, along with new train stops and corridors thrown into the mix, it feels like a convoluted mess at times. It can be quite tough to make heads or tails of it all. On top of this, it can be hard to gage the needs of the many travelers. At times, I could swear that my signs were as clear as possible, only to notice some were still confused as to where to go. Large, prominent red bubbles will crop up over the head of a displeased commuter with little indication as to their beef.
Adding to this is the occasional vagueness with some of the gameplay mechanics. STATIONflow never quite makes clear the ranges, frequency, and general logistics of the signs. If you’ve got a branching path and both ultimately lead to “C3,” is it appropriate to tag both paths “C3” or just the shorter route? Is it necessary that I tag a sign with a staircase marker, even if a stairwell resides right next to it? How specific and general can I be? What’s the general vicinity in which these people can make out signs? Questions like these often cropped up while managing my station, without much feedback aside from basic “satisfaction” and “evaluation” meters.
The game can devolve into feeling like a tedious chore, as you’re constantly bouncing from one sign to the next. “Oh wait, I need to add an arrow pointing this direction too.” “Oh shoot - I forgot to add a tag on this sign!” “Hang on, this sign needs to be marked with a ticket booth.” Et cetera. To its credit though, the ability to copy and paste tags from one sign to the next really helps streamline this painstaking process.
Adding to the ambiguities and restrictive gameplay is the somewhat basic path construction. You can flip through a series of paths varying in thickness, and manipulate their size and shape by dragging corners and edges. Case: animatronics download free. It’s a competent mechanic, though it can feel a bit stiff and clunky, reminiscent of a basic 3D modeling program. It’s fitting that the presentation itself is reminiscent of an early 2000s version of Maya software. Going back to edit, destroy, or reposition pathways also feels fairly restrictive and insufficiently explained. Adding a few additional floors to the mix only makes this more complicated, especially with the trickiness in throwing down elevators that connect floors. Still, it helps that you can at least flip through the perspective of each floor swiftly and easily. The intuitive interface and click / drag controls do aid in easing this process.
Once you’ve cobbled together a fairly functional station with navigation signs, the game starts to “flow” as it were, and its fun factor picks up steam. It was a joy watching people stream through my elaborate, well-oiled machine while earning a steady income. The game continues to grow more interesting as you rank up, as you’ll unlock new structures and an increase in traffic to liven up your station. Happy, unconfused travelers will net you more wealth - though you can also get cash quickly by taking out loans. It’s a nifty feature, though at least in the “normal mode” setting, I never had to resort to it. And yes, I did take some pride in operating a financially prudent, sustainable train station.
You’ll soon unlock structures such as ticket booths and vending machines, as well as buildings like bathrooms and cafes that you’ll want to sprinkle in high-traffic areas. This works to further appease your growing array of travelers. These can be fun to decorate your station with - though they also add to the painstaking process of tagging signs. Such unlocks manage to add to the enjoyment while also bringing new burdens in construction. For instance, you’ll eventually need to erect more elevators after unlocking wheelchair-bound customers. Integrating these new systems into your station can present fun new challenges, but also inflate the stress level.
Really, it’s when you’re at your best in STATIONflow that you’ll actually be struggling to find things to do, as the game largely “plays itself” once the infrastructure is in place. This is where the pacing can feel erratic; oscillating from overwhelming to tepid and boring at times. You may go through the majority of a day with virtually no hurdles or actions required. Another day, a confusing corridor might spur a mob of 500 angry commuters you’ll be scrambling to appease. Thankfully, a useful pause feature allows you to freeze the action and tinker with your station before the mob gets too hysterical. Or you can speed up the passage of time if things are going swimmingly.
While STATIONflow can escalate into convoluted chaos at a moment’s notice, the game, to its credit, does a nice job of easing you into the action at first. A decent tutorial and simple objectives allow you to find your bearings. From there, you can choose from a number of pre-built scenarios that continue to expand as the game progresses. These vary in terms of layouts, ranging from more open-ended sandboxes to distinct missions that are more focused. Each of these missions also comes with customizable options that allow you to adjust the in-game economy and construction time of placed objects. This helps beef up the already solid replay value.
With that said, it’s a bit stripped back when compared to many others in the genre. You can really get the bulk of the experience and obtain all unlockables in the course of a dozen hours. This, coupled with a lifeless presentation, a lack of multiplayer, and a few convoluted elements makes it tough to recommend at nearly $20. Regardless, there are certainly enjoyable moments to be had. I would often find myself shooting for a half-hour session only to find 2 hours had flown by faster than a speeding train. Those who enjoy at least a competent simulation experience would do well to give STATIONflow a look.
