“If all the cars in the country were placed end to end, some fool would still pull out and try to pass them.”
-Author Unknown

o v e r v i e w

Traffic Giant from JoWood Productions is a traffic management simulation game that has an interesting premise but hits a few potholes in its execution. In Traffic Giant you can take the role of either a transportation company entrepreneur or as the transportation manager for the city government. Your task is simple: install a transportation system within a given community to alleviate the traffic. Sound easy? That’s what I thought until I played the game.

The manual for Traffic Giant is not the most helpful but it’s enough to get you started. You have a lot of control over the variables in the game from simple play (people will take any bus you stick in front of them) to professional (people will only ride busses that easily address their travel needs). You can also choose how many competitors you’ll have, if any. Overall, the game plays fairly well. When you install an effective bus, tram or train line you’ll notice a decrease in cars on the road and a corresponding swelling of your company’s value. Things do fluctuate however and you’ll have to keep an eye on travel patterns that may change and make sure your lines overlap to allow people the chance to reach areas that may not be directly served by the line closest to their current location. It’s also genuinely challenging when a competitor moves into an area you have covered and starts to siphon off your customers.

You can affect the likelihood of people choosing your lines by purchasing newer, more attractive vehicles, advertising and offering special rates for students. You’ll need all of these tweaks if there is an accident (they tend to happen in small clusters I’ve noticed). Public perception of your company will plummet and may take months to recover to pre-accident levels. Increasing pay and training can reduce, but not completely eliminate, accidents from occurring.

Computer competitors are where the problems with Traffic Giant are most apparent. When I tested the most basic computer opponent (the one I feel is most likely to be chosen by new players) I noticed a problematic approach to the game. The computer is aggressive when it moves into a market. This wouldn’t be a problem if it switched to trams or trains at some point. Instead, it threw more busses at the problem. Ironically, this led to, you guessed it, more traffic jams. However, this time the traffic was jammed by a myriad of computer busses locked in intersections with each other. I’m then faced with the task of shutting down or re-routing lines I have going through that area. Very annoying.

All in all, if you enjoyed the building aspects of SimCity or Railroad Tycoon II, then you’ll enjoy the satisfaction of building a well-run transportation system. You may want to turn off the computer opponents and save yourself the frustration of seeing the streets locked in revenue draining jam by an AI that’s not smart enough to pull busses off the streets and drop rail lines.

Traffic Giant is a decent game for its price (it’ll be a better buy at $19.99). I give it a “buy” rating.

h i n t s & t i p s :

• It’s not that clear but to start a line you must select the green check box before AND after to make the line official. Simply completing the loop is not enough.

• Business and entertainment areas rule. Build lines that service a downtown area or a movie theater/stadium first. Always use the map to run your line through the areas that want to visit the location.

• If you have a strong positive cash flow, add enough busses or trams to a line to keep all of the stops green (meaning the wait time isn’t bad) but not completely empty. Keep an eye on your lines and make sure that all busses or trams are being used as much as possible. You want to make sure that a line pays for all of the vehicles to keep your company value high.

• Add new busses or trams to a line before taking old ones offline. Wait for the old bus or tram to be as empty as possible before you take it offline. As soon as you retire an old bus or train from one line, move it to a smaller line or sell it. Don’t carry old vehicles.

• Always overlap your lines at one or two points with other lines. This allows people to transfer to reach other destinations and allows you the chance to keep the line’s loop relatively short.

• Watch the traffic at the beginning of the game. Run only one line down the most trafficked route to start. Don’t run too many lines down a busy street early in the game. You don’t want your busses stuck in traffic and unable to generate revenue. Often side streets can provide coverage of the same buildings with less congestion (similar to driving in Los Angeles).

• You won’t be able to build suburban or elevated trains until that technology becomes available. When it does, run suburban trains from the neighborhoods to the downtown or recreation areas and make sure the station is very near a bus or tram overlap stop. This will create a nexus for distributing traffic throughout the city efficiently.

• Replace your busiest bus lines with trams as soon as financially possible. This allows you to carry more passengers with fewer vehicles. Remember that trams can get stuck in traffic and are twice as long as busses.