Hello fellow Rivals and welcome to our first Metro Rivals Dev Blog!
It’s good to be back, and we want to tell you all about what we’ve been up to since October, with an update on our continued development process, while we move ever closer to the game’s launch later this year. You can expect to see behind-the-scenes news, screenshots, videos, and in-depth information from across our development team.
In a hurry? We got you covered with a quick TL;DR (Too long, didn’t read) summary:
* Metro Rivals is a new simcade game developed by Dovetail Games * Race subway trains across a semi-fictional, near-future New York City * Face fearsome Track Titans in singleplayer or race your friends in online multiplayer
* A lot of feedback has been gathered over the last few months, shaping our development process directly
* Join our Dovetail PlayLab for a chance to playtest our games and shape their future
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Since the initial announcement
[https://live.dovetailgames.com/live/train-sim-world/articles/article/metro-rivals-announcement]
last year, a lot of work has been done behind the scenes.
Today we want to give you an exclusive first look into a vital part of game development – player testing, featuring our new PlayLab.
Watching you hone your subway-driving skills in our test sessions allowed us to hone our game development skills. Funny how that works. Keep reading if you want to learn how to take part in these playtest sessions.
How we got here
Last October we announced Metro Rivals: New York, a thrilling train simcade experience set in a near-future New York City, coming from Dovetail Games, experts in realistic train simulation planned to release later this year.
This will be our first foray into a more approachable, arcade-like game with simulation technology at heart – or as we like to call it, a simcade. You don’t need expert knowledge of train safety systems, just hop in, hit the gas and race along the track – but be sure to watch your speed, unless you plan to fly off the tracks!
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We were so hyped for the original announcement that we wanted to make it as authentic as possible. To pull that off, we collaborated with a professional graffiti artist to spray-paint the Metro Rivals logo. Make sure to watch that happen in this video:
In Metro Rivals: New York, the subway has fallen under the control of fierce individuals known as The Track Titans. In the single-player mode. your mission is to transform your subway operation into a bold and unique empire while outsmarting opponents and securing your reputation on the rails.
Multiplayer allows up to four players to race each other, and with cross-platform support, you can join players no matter if they play on PC, Xbox Series X/S or PlayStation 5.
Development Progress Sneak Peek
To give you an idea of the progress we made since the original announcement back in October, we recreated the screenshots from back then in the latest version of the development build. We are very excited to see those changes and hope you are too.
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Your Feedback So Far
We're super busy working on Metro Rivals, but in the meantime, we've managed to let a few of you get your hands on the game. Hearing all your fantastic feedback has been awesome, and it’s great to see lots of positive thoughts we can build on.
Back in November, we attended the To The Moon Expo in Birmingham, where loads of passionate gamers and newcomers to the hobby visited our stand. They were the first to be able to play the game in public, and our Game Designer & UX Researcher were present to take in feedback.
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Our visitors then had the chance to fill out our feedback form to help us understand what they enjoyed and what we could do better. We are proud to say that the feedback was excellent, with an average rating of 4.4 out of 5 stars!
Some of our visitors came back multiple times to have another go at challenging the first Track Titan. Others praised the music and how it reminded them of a certain skateboarding game. We will talk more about how we use Reactional to make the game’s music feel dynamic in a future Dev Blog.
People enjoyed their time with the demo, with both veteran gamers and non-gamers alike providing us with lots of constructive feedback, which has already been brought into the production process, improving the game.
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In addition, we’ve been inviting people to our Dovetail PlayLab playtesting sessions, which we use to inform our development process even further.
Dovetail PlayLab is a program in which we invite people to our office in Chatham, Kent, to test our games and provide direct feedback. This initiative has proven invaluable for our other games and has been imperative to our development of Metro Rivals: New York.
We host regular playtesting sessions, both in-person and online, so if you’re interested, you can apply to join a future playtest here:
https://dovetailgames.com/playlab [http://dovetailgames.com/playlab]
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What’s next?
We have so much more to show you, starting with a livestream on our YouTube channel, starting at 7 pm GMT later today! Make sure to join us when we chat with the development team and go into more details.
Following that, you can expect more Dev Blogs shining spotlights on other areas of the development process and the cool features of Metro Rivals. We’re thrilled to tell you all about the features, like how we use Reactional music to make the game feel even more exciting.
If you’re looking for more fun, we’ve got a Q&A stream coming up next week on February 18th at 7 pm GMT. Hop into our official Discord server to chat with us and drop any questions you want us to answer during the livestream! Can’t wait to see you there!
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Join the conversation
Thank you for joining us for the first Metro Rivals Devblog! To join the conversation, make sure to jump onto the official Dovetail Games Discord Server [http://discord.com/invite/dovetailgames], sign up for the newsletter [https://live.dovetailgames.com/auth/register?returnPath=/] and follow us on
Twitter/X [https://x.com/MetroRivals], Bluesky
[https://bsky.app/profile/metrorivals.bsky.social], TikTok
[https://www.tiktok.com/@metrorivals], Instagram
[https://www.instagram.com/metrorivals/], YouTube
[https://www.youtube.com/@MetroRivals] and Facebook
[https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61577409222955].