Traffic is stressful. A game about directing traffic should be stressful. Urban Flow isn't. If anything, it's quite a zen experience; more so with each additional player you bring into the game. It's a game that anyone can play, with a premise that can be explained to anyone in a matter of seconds. This is a tremendous strength.
To our recollection, there haven't been that many games about the traffic department. Air traffic, sure – it's a minor subgenre in Japan with the likes of the brilliantly-titled I Am An Air Traffic Controller – but not so much with ground-based vehicles. DOS obscurity Traffic Department 2192 took a less pacifistic approach to the profession, with the closest thing to Urban Flow that we can recall being Nintendo's hidden GBA gem bit Generations DigiDrive, But even that isn't particularly reminiscent of Baltoro Games' little traffic toy box.
Urban Flow is extremely simple, but there's a fair amount to get your head around. You're presented with a section of city; intersecting highways, roundabouts – your commute, basically. Each face button switches a traffic light on or off. All you need to do is make sure the traffic – yes – flows. This is a little easier said than done, as there are plenty of little nuances and additional considerations to take into account.
Besides your common-or-garden traffic, you'll need to keep an eye out for the likes of ambulances, which operate on their own timer. While you can delay standard vehicles as long as you want, the ambulances need to get going soon or you'll fail the current level. As well as the emergency services, you'll need to watch out for the disconcerting sight of tanks roaming the streets, as they'll ignore your red lights entirely no matter how bright they are. What are you going to do about it?
Further spanners are thrown into the works with particularly convoluted intersections and automated bridges and train tracks. Your "camera" (the view of each stage) isn't infallible, either – sometimes poor conditions will steam it up and you'll need to hit the left analogue stick to clean it. This move is also used to remove broken-down cars from the roads, or errant trash that's fallen out of a passing garbage truck.
As we say, there's a good amount to commit to memory and that helps keeps the game involving. Power-ups can be a boon when things get hectic, with the basic extra life being joined by an icon that allows you to slow time if you need to make quick decisions to prevent a nasty collision. Having some measure of command over the flow of time tends to be useful in this sort of situation; you can't just leave traffic sitting at the lights as they'll switch over automatically if you want too long.
Adding more players, though, will give you something of an advantage. It's easier with friends, where you won't need to multi-task quite so much – instead, you can assign tasks amongst your fellow players. Multiplayer is local-only (for up to four players) but to be fair, online wouldn't be a great fit for this kind of game. Any kind of latency would make it next to impossible It's a nice way to take the edge off what's ultimately a difficult and demanding puzzle game by introducing co-operation into the mix. It's still not easy, though.
Graphically and musically, Urban Flow is good stuff. Not particularly detailed, but it doesn't really need to be; you need to know what's moving, what kind of vehicle it is, and whether it's currently able to progress. Anything else is just cruft, so it's extremely effective that everything you can see on the screen is somehow critically relevant to the game in progress. The soundtrack is a rather chilled-out glitch-hop-ish ambience, not dissimilar to the music from the brilliant Love and its sequel Kuso. You could almost call them... wait for it... traffic jams.
It all amounts to a game where you've got a lot of plates to spin, but doing so ends up being conversely relaxing. Watching the traffic move safely at you and your friends' command is satisfying and a little bit hypnotic. Progressing through the games lengthy campaign will last you long enough – getting three stars on every stage with careful management is satisfying and difficult – but even if you clear that out there's a lovely "Endless" mode to play as well, in which you'll pick your traffic interchange and go to town. With an achievement system and plenty of unlockables, there's a lot here to work towards if you find yourself sucked in.
Conclusion
The word of the day here is "absorbing". Urban Flow's title isn't a misnomer; the gameplay is as smooth as the graphics and once the pieces are in place you shouldn't have any trouble getting your head around it. Accessibility has been rather masterfully welded to a relatively complex, punishing task, here. We dare say it might be difficult to think of your own ventures out into the city centre the same way again. After all, Urban Flow will quickly make you an expert at directing traffic.
Comments 16
I have never even heard of this until just now. I like the look of it and from the review it sounds like something I would like. Tossing it on the old wishlist! Great Review!
I've had a long-time desire to make a traffic game that used actual street-light data to optimize all the awful traffic lights... (have players optimize, then send back the optimizations to the cities and have them implement sane approaches to traffic lights)
I think I'll give up on that plan now, and maybe check out the game, great review!
Bought it a few days ago, think it was 50% discount , nice game .
From what I am reading, this sounds really close to Conduct Together, which is a plus for me! If anyone has played both, I would love your thoughts on how the two compare.
I haven't played Conduct Together, but just looking up the trailer, it does look similar. I got a good laugh out of it when the trains started going through a castle guarded by a dragon. That's a silly looking game. If it's as good as Urban Flow, I definitely need to look into it more.
Conduct Together is so good. I've enjoyed it alot. I haven't tried Urban Flow yet though... I'm also interested in comparisons twixt the two. Also Mini Metro (I love that game!). If anyone can compare Urban Flow to Mini Metro that would be interesting. I'm also curious about the frame rate on this one. Both Conduct Together and Mini Metro get some of their charm and pleasantness from their 60fps niceness.
Based on 60fps youtube videos it looks like Urban Flow targets 60fps and does a great job hitting it. Also, to me the music sounds more like the spacey music of Hotline Miami. I love Love and Kuso, but consider their music more chiptune or 8 bit sounding (great music in both games!). I'm probably getting Urban Flow very soon.
I'm tempted to check this out. Even though it says it's a solid mix of a fun stressful and relaxing experience I can see my anxiety being all over the place.
i was looking for other reviews to see more about endless mode, then i saw this:
https://enewsplanet.com/review-urban-flow/
lol
Makes it harder for us Brits as they're driving on the wrong side of the road!
@Spanish_Bread Wow that's a cut and paste job right there. And no credit or link back.
Baltoro makes a game that scores above a 5/10?!?!? Times are changin
I saw the youtube feature of this game by Nintendo Life. Seems like an interesting game. May get it as it is currently discounted I believe
YOU are the most stressful aspect of urban flow...
very interesting and unique game.
you can simply put the train on hold forever.
A really good version would be to disallow you to stop the last light.
That way you would have to make hard choices. Now you just can take your sweet time, letting one flow at a time pass through. There is absolutely nothing to manage here. Just put everything on hold and wait for an ambulance then let that go through.
Difficulty varies wildly, from hard to tediously simple. Very unpolished idea and very samey.
It's on sale for $4 but also 3.3GB, so I'd rather buy it physical.
Max playtime about 3 hours.
Best to wait for a more polished sequel.
Also it blatantly discriminates against left driving citizens such as Japan and much of Asia.
This is on sale for £1 on the eshop at the moment
Who’s here reading this in 2021?!? Anyway, I just bought this on the store for little over a £1! Best quid I ever spent. Loving it so far. Even bought both expansions. It’s such a chilled game.
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