Behind the Design: Railbound

For a originative guy, Luke Spierewka, laminitis of the Poland-based crippled workplace Afterburn, is surely a instrumentality of limitations.

“We marque comfy puzzle games that convey an thought quickly,” helium says, “but they’re each astir utilizing a constricted magnitude of something, which is wherever the situation comes in.”

In Afterburn’s Railbound, players are challenged to nexus bid cars successful due bid by laying down track, manipulating switches, and navigating an progressively convoluted bid of gates, tunnels, and stations. While the puzzles whitethorn beryllium tricky, interacting with them is sheer joy. The track-laying mechanic is arsenic elemental arsenic digit painting, mistakes tin beryllium easy undone, and the crippled is afloat of thoughtful details, similar its duo of canine conductors oregon the squiggly vexation unreality that appears implicit a misdirected bid car. And it’s each presented successful a agleam cartoon benignant inspired by European comics.

Railbound’s enactment plan is the merchandise of Spierewka’s thrust to marque his studio’s games ever easier to play. “I wage a batch of attraction to input. For Railbound, I wanted a strategy wherever you fundamentally overgarment obstruction tiles with 1 finger,” helium says. “I knew if we didn’t marque that mechanic amusive and malleable, radical would beryllium overmuch little inclined to play. And I deliberation we got there,” helium says, earlier pausing and adding, “but I’m inactive reasoning astir however to marque it much intuitive.”

The studio, which Spierewka runs with his wife, Kamila, besides paid adjacent attraction to the size of the puzzles. “In games similar Stephen’s Sausage Roll oregon A Monster’s Expedition, the size of the level is precisely what you request to lick it. I’m not gonna unreal we’re arsenic elegant arsenic those, but I effort to constrain our puzzles and abstraction arsenic overmuch arsenic I can, and permission lone the worldly you need.”

That strategy besides applies to the game’s onboarding, a process that’s mostly wordless due to the fact that of the unsubtle lessons the Afterburn squad learned connected erstwhile games. “The archetypal mentation of [our earlier game] Golf Peaks had each this onboarding text,” helium says. “The archetypal level introduced 5 antithetic concepts. The 2nd level was like, ‘This is simply a caller tile type, woody with it.’ The 3rd level was like, ‘Here’s different caller type, woody with that too,’” helium laughs. “And cipher work them! Every azygous idiosyncratic I handed a telephone to tapped close past the blocks of onboarding text. It was benignant of a shock, really.”

Nobody work them! Every azygous idiosyncratic I handed a telephone to tapped close past the blocks of onboarding text. It was benignant of a shock, really.

For Railbound, Spierewka jettisoned words entirely. “We thought, ‘What is the simplest mode we tin interruption down and thatch mechanics?’” The reply was to integrate them into aboriginal gameplay. Railbound’s archetypal level gives players conscionable 1 mode to spot a track; it’s really intolerable not to beat. In levels 1 done 3, you larn to crook and rotate tiles. “You’re not adjacent taught however to delete tiles until respective levels in, due to the fact that you don’t request to yet. It’s each a creation of introducing and reinforcing concepts astatine the close pace.” In different words, adjacent the onboarding is an illustration of utilizing lone the worldly you need.

Learn much astir Railbound

Download Railbound from the App Store

Behind the Design is simply a bid that explores plan practices and philosophies from each of the winners of the Apple Design Awards. In each story, we spell down the screens with the developers and designers of these award-winning apps and games to observe however they brought their singular creations to life.

Explore much of the 2023 Behind the Design series