YBdesigning

Don't you worry about my Mini Metro fancraze.)
I will do another game soon...

But before that wait for some exciting update for my channel!

03.12.2025 08:12 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

Hi, everyone!
I've made my first short video "How they made Mini Metro"
Here I tell simplified & a bit speculated story about making of Mini Metro by @dinopoloclub.bsky.social

I'm gonna continue this format for "How they made..." shorts/reels. Any feedback is welcome!
youtube.com/shorts/awY9m...

03.12.2025 08:10 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

Thank you for good games and inspiration! Here's for more awesome play time!

11.11.2025 04:30 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 1    📌 0

Mini Metro Interactive Prototype In this Figma file - Experiment with Figma prototype of the famous game about managing beatiful minimalist metro! - Learn the size of UI/UX design that is needed for such game development - Lots of text styles, colour system, icons, components and more reconstructed in Figma - Learn the insights on game design Upcoming Updates: - desktop version - solutions (playing Mini Motorways for inspiration)

Support me If you want more Figma & game UI things suxh as that or monthly polls to help me choose next game/idea/ to pursue, please consider supporting me on Patreon! Patreon.com/ybdesigning These are my top and only supporters: Yuliya 78, Vladimir Li, Виктор Талаев, Екатерина Болатова YB

What's inside?

Please consider supprting me for more Figma and game research projects

05.11.2025 23:37 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 1    📌 0

Figma file for Mini Metro videogame released!

Available at figma.com/@ybdesigning

Everything done without use of AI

Created with @figma.com
Recreated the game of @dinopoloclub.bsky.social

05.11.2025 23:37 — 👍 2    🔁 0    💬 1    📌 0

Will be thankful for any opinion from gamedev industry people on such a format of miniessays and post itself
And if you liked it, support me on Patreon and suggest other games for such analysis.

Also, it's only a first part. The next post will be about my recreation of the game UI in Figma.

30.10.2025 18:00 — 👍 2    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

12. Conclusion So, there we have it. Mini Metro is a champion of minimalism: - Its gameplay is easy to learn, but hard to master - Its aesthetics are iconic (hehe!) and efficient - UX helpful and just enough But for me personally it haven’t escaped the main problem of minimalist approach: The lack of novelty over time. It’s just my opinion! Still the game is awesome and I recommend it for everyone who loves trains, game design, strategy, graphic design and trains!

13. Here’s more... To play: From this developer Mini Motorways It’s a spiritual sequel to Mini Metro. But harder better faster stronger.) To Learn: From this developer GDC talk about making of the game Very interesting talk. You can see their train of thought while they were cooking Serialism & Sonification in Mini Metro (GDC 2018) Disasterpeace tells us how they created procedurally generated music in the game

Conclusion and more to links to learn about their creation processes.

GDC talk about the game design of Mini Metro:
youtu.be/kmHXk4Y35QM?...

GDC talk about music
youtu.be/FgV4hSfsl00?...

Long talk with Disasterpeace & Mini Metro audio designer
youtu.be/Bd0d_NdI2qI?...

30.10.2025 17:52 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

Accessibility of Mini Metro

30.10.2025 17:52 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 1    📌 0

7. Risks To talk about risks of minimalist approach I need to tell you about the Level variety

8. Level variety So, each level in Mini Metro is a different city. And their variety is achieved by manipulations with... 1. Map conditions Water masses It’s placement pressures you to buy lots of tunnels Passenger boarding speeds Number variable Frequency of stations and passengers Number variable 2. Resources / upgrades available Tokyo has superfast bullet trains Level has special resource Lisbon allows just up to 5 lines Limit player Relative frequency of upgrades Number variable

9. Level variety 3. Cosmetic differences Each city has their own color identity Cosmetic Some cities have small differences in station icons Cosmetic Several cities use bridges instead of tunnels Cosmetic 4. Challenges Optional challenges change your playstyle and make the level feel unique. - Use only one tunnel in London - Use only looped lines in Pairs - Connect square stations up to 2 lines in New York What’s even cooler: They’ve been adding lots of levels after release, and Steam version allows to play levels created by community!

10. Risks of minimalism After unlocking every level I started completing hard challenges. I felt awesome when I did the 1st three levels, but then I've started noticing the repetition in challenge rules and pretty quickly lost interest in completing them. So it means that for me at that point the game has lost the sense of novelty Possible solutions I would suggest — adding more character to the cities by: - Adding challenges more in line with the cities; - Adding some cultural accurate icons; - Maybe, adding small unlockable facts about their transit systems I know it means more research work, but I feel that it might be just as rewarding

Risks of Minimalist approach

30.10.2025 17:52 — 👍 2    🔁 0    💬 1    📌 0

Aesthetics
Inspirations: Harry Beck, Massimo Vignelli.
Disasterpeace helped to achieve a unique musical approach.

30.10.2025 17:52 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 1    📌 0

2 Inspired by their experiences in navigating the London metro map, developers from Dinosaur Polo Club jammed and created the game about managing the rail transit networks. And in the process, they’ve mastered the Minimalist approach to game design. Let's see how they did that.

3. Gameplay: easy to learn... So, what do you do in the game? Basically the game loop is as follows: - You use rail road lines to connect ever-appearing geometrically shaped stations, so that passengers could ride the train to the station of their shape. - Every in-game week you choose which upgrades to receive, - And try to avoid passengers overcrowding your stations, which will be a game over. Simple. Fewer game elements you have —easier to learn their basics

4. Gameplay: easy to learn... ...hard to master Fewer game elements, also allow you to pay more attention to polishing their Mechanics. Some examples of interesting conundrums you need to care about in the game: - Some stations are rare, but popular — you have to plan an easy access to them - Should you spend a tunnel to go under the river, or make a rail line go around the water, but make path longer? - Sharp turns at the stations make trains stop at them even if station is empty, so you should avoid that Difficulty spikes up fast after initial weeks and you start revising your strategy before angry city government closes up your underground.

5. Quick to boot The UI/UX of the game is top notch too: - You can stop in-game time to decide your next move, or you can speed it up, if you are sure with your decisions. - The game pauses the time, when you violate rules of the challenge to help you undo the wrong action. - The simple graphics make game fast to boot. - Launch the game and you will continue right where you were The last point are also why I find it's mobile version as a good example of plug'n'play kind of a game. - I found myself playing Mini Metro while waiting for lunch, for friend or even while riding the subway! Meta!

Tried to analyse game design, but I am not sure how much I should cover in such mini-essays.

30.10.2025 17:52 — 👍 3    🔁 0    💬 1    📌 0

Mini-essay/review/analysis thing about Mini Metro.

In times, when I couldn't play huge games, it was one of those mobile games, that kept me going.
Thank you, @dinopoloclub.bsky.social

30.10.2025 17:52 — 👍 4    🔁 1    💬 1    📌 2

23.10.2025 10:28 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

23.10.2025 10:28 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 1    📌 0

I am creating a blog where I research video game design, recreate their UI in Figma and developing web guide for the gamedev.

Please consider subscribing to my figma.com/ybdesigning and supporting me on patreon.com/ybdesigning

23.10.2025 10:28 — 👍 3    🔁 0    💬 1    📌 0