{"id":134599,"date":"2023-06-06T01:00:09","date_gmt":"2023-06-06T01:00:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/developer.apple.com\/news\/?id=0x08hncy"},"modified":"2023-06-06T01:00:09","modified_gmt":"2023-06-06T01:00:09","slug":"behind-the-design-railbound","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/2023\/06\/06\/behind-the-design-railbound\/","title":{"rendered":"Behind the Design: Railbound"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>\n

For a creative guy, Luke Spierewka, founder of the Poland-based game studio Afterburn, is certainly a fan of limitations. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe make comfy puzzle games that convey an idea quickly,\u201d he says, \u201cbut they\u2019re all about using a limited amount of something, which is where the challenge comes in.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"*Railbound\u2019s*<\/div>\n

In Afterburn\u2019s Railbound<\/em>, players are challenged to link train cars in proper order by laying down track, manipulating switches, and navigating an increasingly convoluted series of gates, tunnels, and stations. While the puzzles may be tricky, interacting with them is sheer joy. The track-laying mechanic is as simple as finger painting, mistakes can be easily undone, and the game is full of thoughtful details, like its duo of canine conductors or the squiggly frustration cloud that appears over a misdirected train car. And it\u2019s all presented in a bright cartoon style inspired by European comics. <\/p>\n

\"Luke<\/div>\n

Railbound\u2019s interaction design is the product of Spierewka\u2019s drive to make his studio\u2019s games ever easier to play. \u201cI pay a lot of attention to input. For Railbound<\/em>, I wanted a system where you basically paint rail tiles with one finger,\u201d he says. \u201cI knew if we didn\u2019t make that mechanic fun and malleable, people would be much less inclined to play. And I think we got there,\u201d he says, before pausing and adding, \u201cbut I\u2019m still thinking about how to make it more intuitive.\u201d <\/p>\n

The studio, which Spierewka runs with his wife, Kamila, also paid close attention to the size of the puzzles. \u201cIn games like Stephen\u2019s Sausage Roll<\/em> or A Monster\u2019s Expedition<\/em>, the size of the level is exactly what you need to solve it. I\u2019m not gonna pretend we\u2019re as elegant as those, but I try to constrain our puzzles and space as much as I can, and leave only the stuff you need.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"*Railbound\u2019s*<\/div>\n

That strategy also applies to the game\u2019s onboarding, a process that\u2019s largely wordless because of the unsubtle lessons the Afterburn team learned on previous games. \u201cThe first version of [our earlier game] Golf Peaks<\/em> had all this onboarding text,\u201d he says. \u201cThe first level introduced five different concepts. The second level was like, \u2018This is a new tile type, deal with it.\u2019 The third level was like, \u2018Here\u2019s another new type, deal with that too,\u2019\u201d he laughs. \u201cAnd nobody read them! Every single person I handed a phone to tapped right past the blocks of onboarding text. It was kind of a shock, really.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

Nobody read them! Every single person I handed a phone to tapped right past the blocks of onboarding text. It was kind of a shock, really.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Luke Spierewka, Afterburn<\/p>\n

<\/cite><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

For Railbound<\/em>, Spierewka jettisoned words entirely. \u201cWe thought, \u2018What is the simplest way we can break down and teach mechanics?\u2019\u201d The answer was to integrate them into early gameplay. Railbound\u2019s first level gives players just one way to place a track; it\u2019s actually impossible not to beat. In levels 1 through 3, you learn to bend and rotate tiles. \u201cYou\u2019re not even taught how to delete tiles until several levels in, because you don\u2019t need to yet. It\u2019s all a dance of introducing and reinforcing concepts at the right pace.\u201d In other words, even the onboarding is an example of using only the stuff you need.<\/p>\n

Learn more about Railbound<\/a><\/p>\n

Download Railbound from the App Store<\/a><\/p>\n

Behind the Design is a series that explores design practices and philosophies from each of the winners of the Apple Design Awards. In each story, we go behind the screens with the developers and designers of these award-winning apps and games to discover how they brought their remarkable creations to life.<\/em><\/p>\n

Explore more of the 2023 Behind the Design series<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For a creative guy, Luke Spierewka, founder of the Poland-based game studio Afterburn, is certainly a fan of limitations. \u201cWe make comfy puzzle games that convey an idea quickly,\u201d he says, \u201cbut they\u2019re all about using a limited amount of something, which is where the challenge comes in.\u201d In Afterburn\u2019s Railbound, players are challenged to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":134600,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-134599","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-apple-developer-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134599","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=134599"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134599\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/134600"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=134599"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=134599"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=134599"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}