LudumData

Junction Keeper by Richard Baltrusch

[raw]
made by Richard Baltrusch for Ludum Dare 59 (COMPO)

It's your first day on the job at the Great New Rail Corporation! You are their new rail signal operator manually signalling trains - try to get them to their destination safely and keep them from crashing!

Controls: - Hover trains to check their itinerary - Left mouse button: cycle through rail signal (red = STOP, yellow = REVERSE) - Right mouse button: clear rail signal - F: Speed up game speed - D: Slow down game speed - Escape: Back to main menu - F11 / Alt+Enter: Toggle fullscreen

A game by Richard Baltrusch. Implemented with Godot 4.4

Note: sometimes fast trains need multiple consecutive STOP signals to come to a halt.

gameplay_latest.gif

Known issues: - Trains normally stay on track and not cut corners like that :) - Trains will first move FORWARD to fully reach a REVERSE signal, then start reversing, which can sometimes cause train collisions. - Very rarely a train can end up getting confused while reversing, going completely off-track and disappearing into the bushes...

Ran out of time before adding: - different maps - the remainder of the rail tileset graphics - screen shake and particle effects

Tools used: Godot 4.4, Aseprite, Audacity, Bfxr

Link https://github.com/rbaltrusch/junction_keeper
Link https://richardbaltrusch.itch.io/junction-keeper
Original URL https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/59/junction-keeper

Ratings

Overall 213th 3.204⭐ 29🧑‍⚖️
Fun 185th 3.148⭐ 29🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 198th 3.093⭐ 29🧑‍⚖️
Theme 145th 3.704⭐ 29🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 220th 3.093⭐ 29🧑‍⚖️
Audio 162th 3.173⭐ 28🧑‍⚖️
Humor 96th 2.913⭐ 25🧑‍⚖️
Mood 204th 3.109⭐ 25🧑‍⚖️
Given 27🗳️ 26🗨️

Feedback

lanatra
Apr 20th · 07:06 UTC
Cute game. I wish I could set signals per track, so I can give one train the go while stopping another, at the same junction.
I think the first level could have been way simpler (less junctions) to get a feel of the controls.
Loved the time control, really neat way of giving the player a chance to set the mood or difficulty level they want.
🎤 Richard Baltrusch
Apr 20th · 16:55 UTC
@lanatra Thank you for the kind words :) I had planned to make the level maps different (should not have taken long), but ran out of time at the end! The time control was initially a debug mode - but players usually love those so I just left it in :)
poddub
Apr 20th · 17:38 UTC
love vibe of this small train town 🚂💚
TasakaSama
Apr 20th · 20:49 UTC
It's really funny to see another version of his idea; I made almost the same game. Well done!
Lexu
Apr 21st · 05:40 UTC
Lovely game! Would be nice if there was a button to slow the trains immediately to 1x speed or in larger increments for those of us who like to speed to the station, then realize they're going way too fast for the next stop.

Super solid game.
🎤 Richard Baltrusch
Apr 21st · 12:50 UTC
@tasakasama And here I thought I was being very original :D I did mean to make a train game for a while - it seems like there are a couple train entries this LD :) Will check yours tonight!
🎤 Richard Baltrusch
Apr 21st · 12:53 UTC
@lexu Thank you for playing and the feedback! You are right, the speed meter actually controls the train max speed and acceleration, not the simulation speed, so what you described can happen (though I didn't think about it at all tbh). Honestly I kinda like it as emergent difficulty - though it would likely pair well with a "lower your speed" type of placeable track signal :thumbsup:
drtizzle
Apr 21st · 17:49 UTC
Really fun little rail‑management puzzle! Juggling STOP/REVERSE signals gets tense fast, especially with the quicker trains. A simpler first level would help ease players in, but the core idea is solid and satisfying. Well done!
PurpledArtFrog
Apr 21st · 18:49 UTC
Cute game - and good use of the theme :thumbsup_tone1: I struggled a little with figuring out how the signals worked.... but that was a minor thing :smile:

Let you a rating
🎤 Richard Baltrusch
Apr 22nd · 21:52 UTC
@purpledartfrog you know, you're on to something - I was crunching so hard to release something reasonable that it didn't even cross my mind to add a little tutorial text mentioning these signals :laughing:

I'll call it "emergent difficulty" :D
moyuowo
Apr 23rd · 03:29 UTC
This is a fantastic design! I actually toyed with a similar idea involving traffic lights and flow at the start of the jam, but I ended up scrapping it because the logic seemed way too complex to finish in 48 hours. Seeing your take on railway scheduling is super cool!

The UI and art style are really clean, and the audio/BGM is a huge plus—it really ties the whole atmosphere together.

A couple of minor suggestions: The difficulty spike from Level 2 to 3 felt a bit steep. Also, I found it a bit tedious to constantly hover over trains to check their routes. It might be much smoother if the paths were permanently visible or could be toggled on.

Overall, a really solid entry that fits the theme perfectly. Great job!
Floonace
Apr 23rd · 14:18 UTC
It's a lot of fun. I also liked that we could play at our own speed. However, the sounds should have been a bit more varied, and we shouldn't have to hold the cursor directly above the train to see its path. This way, we can't see the track even when the train moves slightly.
🎤 Richard Baltrusch
Apr 24th · 08:02 UTC
@moyuowo Thank you for checking it out and glad you like it :) I had been meaning to make a train game recently, and the theme seemed to fit well. Thank you for the suggestion - I agree in the final level there's a difficulty jump sometimes depending on how unlucky you get with new train spawning and chosen routes (something I partially coded in to avoid but there seems to be a problem). Maybe a slowdown signal or signal to recalculate route upon blockage could help here if I were to expand the game further :) The destination hover I thought about revealing always but I think the game then loses a certain frantic gameplay element - maybe a fade out would help so it stays on screen a bit longer.
🎤 Richard Baltrusch
Apr 24th · 08:03 UTC
@floonace Thanks for the feedback! I don't usually make mouse controlled games, so your tip about a bigger hover hitbox is very useful :)
Zettelkasten
May 02nd · 11:11 UTC
Hey, this is basically the same concept that I had in mind for my game (I'm surprised not more people interpreted signals as train signal!) - so very interesting and well executed!
I liked your graphics, story bits and especially the music getting faster as you fast-forwarded.
As for game play, I think it works generally, but overall it felt a bit overwhelming and to me it seemed to depend a lot on luck whether you're doing alright or not. In fact, I was able to pass the first two levels without even setting any signal :D
Overall, very nice entry!
Accelerate0814
May 02nd · 13:58 UTC
Really fun game! It's so cool that the background music actually changes based on my speed!
oller125
May 02nd · 15:57 UTC
I like the take on the theme. Simple controls but the behaviour can get quite complex.
someone
May 02nd · 17:41 UTC
Yay, a fellow train game.
Neat idea, it was a fun challenge, though randomness played a large part. I beat the second level without having to do anything at all. Also the the red blocks seemed to no longer work when I got to the third level.

The reverse blocks confused me, Surely the train has a specific destination and going backwards doesn't help with that, plus if they can go backwards it is no longer clear where they are supposed to be going. I ended up not using them other than by accident due to the three way toggle.
auxiliarymoose
May 03rd · 01:28 UTC
The concept is great. The time acceleration also made things quite funny (and chaotic). Many rail managers were disappointed by infrastructure catastrophes. I think it was a little hard to control at times when a fast train takes a long time to slow down and causes an accident, plus generally knowing which trains will/won't collide with each other (feels like there is some randomness/hard to anticipate how to plan things), but overall it is a nice premise and I enjoyed the slapstick nature of things invariably going sideways when trying to speed up time and juggle lots of trains lol. Thanks for sharing your game!
LCStark
May 03rd · 10:39 UTC
Pretty cool little game! Though the management of all the trains gets hectic quite fast. In fact too hectic for me to complete level 3. Several times I restarted for it to just spawn two trains on stations right next to each other, going towards each other and crashing within seconds. When I managed to live a bit longer, I seem to not judge correctly how far away I need to place the signal for trains to be able to slow down and stop, so quite often they just run the red light.

Graphically, it looks pretty good! Watching those little trains move around feels pretty satisfying, and the chill music in the background makes it even better.

This is probably my best score from the final level. Looks like I am slowly getting better at it! ;)

![screen_scaled.png](///raw/3cc/31/z/730ae.png)
🎤 Richard Baltrusch
May 03rd · 19:57 UTC
@zettelkasten Imagine being promoted to Senior Rail Signalling Engineer without ever having set a signal in your life before :D Recipe for disaster. The train spawning logic (which is not completely random) has some leniency built-in, part of which seems to not work - I agree it could definitely be a bit more consistent in difficulty and needs some work. Likely this could also be tuned better simply by increasing/decreasing the map complexity.

Thank you for playing!
🎤 Richard Baltrusch
May 03rd · 20:04 UTC
@someone I had originally envisioned this game without reverse signals (real trains can usually actually reverse by the way), until I realised that sometimes trains went too far and could not be kept from crashing anymore when facing head-on on the same section. Fixing that problem was a gameplay necessity in my opinion, and you likely could fix it either with a siding rail to get out of the way (which I felt a bit complex to implement at the time), or a reverse signal. I ended up having difficulty implementing the reverse signal too, so I likely could actually have done something different. After the jam I was thinking maybe a "recalculate-path-to-destination" signal (taking into account any set path blockages) could have been an alternative. Alas, reverse is in now and mostly does the job~

I agree I could have been clearer when reversing what the actual train's destination was :)

Thank you for playing!
🎤 Richard Baltrusch
May 03rd · 20:06 UTC
@auxiliarymoose I myself may be a bit too silly but hearing the trains crashing made me giggle uncontrollably :laughing: At higher speeds, multiple consecutive block signals are required to stop a speeding train, which I agree is not very intuitive :) Found it a bit hard to tune the balance of it, will work on it!
🎤 Richard Baltrusch
May 03rd · 20:10 UTC
@lcstark Thank you for the feedback!

You're not the only one finding the difficulty not consistent through runs - I realised after the jam that level 3 does feel a little grindy with the imposed hard cut-off of no collisions (was running out of time by the time I was implementing level differences :'). The train spawn logic and target station picking logic could definitely use some work to become more lenient, I agree!

Glad you liked the music, this was me sitting down and jamming literally for a minute at the keyboard :D
blubberquark
May 04th · 13:25 UTC
Why are all these train games so nerve-wracking?
🎤 Richard Baltrusch
May 04th · 13:58 UTC
@blubberquark Probably because we don't wanna make headlines in your local newspaper having caused the latest disastrous train wreckage :-)
freamdev
May 04th · 16:51 UTC
As someone who has hundreds of hours in Factorio building trains it was a lot of fun directing them around.

I had two issues with the randomness, once on lvl3 I got up to 300+ points without having to do anything because the trains just behaved nicely. Then I got a train spawn in a 1 way road 2 blocks away from a train coming to that station and I just lost. Other then that pretty fun ride :smile:
PoshDan
May 04th · 21:12 UTC
I didn't learn how to play this game from the first level, as upon being thrown in, I did nothing and beat the level without any penalty. The second level was a reality check when I lost in the first half minute or so.
There's something about the music combined with this scratchy echo-ey noise that's making me feel like I'm lucid dreaming.
🎤 Richard Baltrusch
May 06th · 13:27 UTC
@freamdev Thank you for playing! Will try to make the train spawning and routing more consistent :)
🎤 Richard Baltrusch
May 06th · 13:29 UTC
@poshdan The music and harmonica sound effects were subjected to a pretty heavy reverb effect like you're in some kind of huge watery cave, so that's probably part of the effect you're describing :-)
CreeperXD
May 07th · 17:05 UTC
I like that in the first level you are already given 2 trains, so it is basically forcing players to learn to change signals, then in later levels a time limit and even banning crashing altogether to increase the challenge. However, that is also why I think maps that increase in complexity would have been really nice, since from the first level you are already given a complex map, which may hinder players' learning of the game mechanics.

I suggest allowing players to check on a train's itinerary and change signals when paused. Even at the lowest game speed I keep failing to stop trains from crashing if they start near each other, especially in the lower right area of the map.
🎤 Richard Baltrusch
May 07th · 18:24 UTC
@creeperxd Thank you for the kind feedback! I wish I would have had time to add map variation :-)

I don't like pause as a game exploration feature - but I think some more lenient train spawning logic and potentially some downtime for a newly spawned train would potentially alleviate your very valid concern.