Mashinky is a strategic building game set in the environment of railway, road, and air transport. At the beginning, the player is assigned a procedurally generated (created automatically using an algorithm) map and becomes an owner of a small transport company in the early 20th century. His or her task is to deliver goods and passengers by planning and building tracks, roads and airports in a complex terrain, and by buying and inventing new types of locomotives, railway cars, cars, plains, station buildings and transport infrastructure. The player must defy the economy and make as much money as possible by moving passengers to cities or goods between many interconnected industries. The goal is to build a transportation empire that spans seven historical eras from the steam era to the super-modern electromagnetically levitated trains.
The game was created in honour of the developer’s childhood games, such as the business-building strategies Transport Tycoon and Railroad Tycoon. Originally, the game was intended to be free of charge and its name used to be Logistics. The author created everything in the game from the game engine to the majority of the graphics.
The name comes from the Czech children’s word for trains “mašinky.” Due to the English spelling of the game’s name, foreign players will be pronouncing this original Czech word.
Since the beginning, Mashinky supports modding (the players being able to modify the game). The community of players has come up with over 300 new locomotives, railway cars, game rules and maps. Almost the entire Czech Railways (the Czech national railway company) have been uploaded to the game.
During gameplay, the player can switch to the unique 2D isometric building view (inspired by the best building strategy titles of the 90s) and then switch from the construction view back to a realistically rendered 3D view, where the whole world is shown down to the smallest details, and the player can take on the role of a train driver.
Maintaining motivation, even though there were complex programming errors in the programme (bugs) that caused the schedule to be extended. Further issues were releasing information on the status of the game development and creating promotional materials.
Game Developers Session – Indie Prize (CZ, 2016),
JRC Gamer Awards – 2017 Best Czech and Slovak Game of the Year (CZ, 2018),
2017 Czech Game of the Year in the category Best Game Design and Rising Star (CZ, 2018),
Game Access – The Best Gameplay a People’s Choice (CZ, 2017)
Jan Zelený
The studio was founded by Jan Zelený, an independent developer, who worked with a team of developers and creatives. Jan Zelený used to work in larger game studios (e.g., 2K Czecha, Bohemia Interactive) while creating his own games, like the adventure Game U Becherů (2003), which competed in the Becherovka Game competition in 2003. Zelený also worked on Mashinky in his spare time in the beginning, but since 2018 he has been working on the project full time and is still working on the expansion and the final version of the game.
Portfolio: U Becherů (2003), Mashinky (early access, 2018)
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