Train Dispatch

A single-track railway. One train is late. Everything else on the line is about to be late too, and the only thing you control is where they pass each other.

The board is the game. Stations down the side, time across. Each sloping line is a train. The faint line is the timetable, the solid one is what will actually happen, and the gap between them is what you are scored on.

Between two passing loops the track takes one train at a time, in either direction. So every crossing is a decision about who waits — and a train made to wait at the wrong loop takes the rest of the afternoon down with it.

The clock runs while you think, and stops whenever you like. Nothing here is trying to hurry you. But a train that has entered a block cannot be pulled back out, so the decisions have to be made before the lines meet.

Reports arrive mid-shift. A passenger taken ill, an obstruction at a level crossing, frozen points. The plan you just finished building is now the wrong plan.

Later you get a second thing to say. Turn a train back short of where it was going: the section beyond is cancelled, but the set comes back sooner. A certain, bounded loss paid to stop an unbounded one.

• 20 shifts across 5 chapters, plus a guided first one
• Every three-star mark is set from a measured optimum, not a guess
• English and Japanese — English by default, switchable in 
• settingsPlays in the browser, or download for Windows

Mouse to give orders. Space to pause, Ctrl+Z to undo, Esc for the menu.