To be honest, in the past two days, I was sorting through the old game ROMs on my phone and found something called "Happy Train Adventure", which instantly took me back to more than ten years ago. At that time, I was still using Nokia Symbian S60v3. The screen was pitifully small, but I could recall all the games I played for a long time. I'm not going to brag about it, but this game was definitely a breath of fresh air in the puzzle genre at the time.
Its core gameplay is simple and crude: you have to control several trains at the same time and let them complete the journey on their own tracks. The difficulty was that the tracks overlapped and the speeds were different. If the timing of departure was slightly miscalculated by a few tenths of a second, the two cars collided. The first level will make you doubt your life. If you don't deduce the train operation and speed calculation in your mind in advance, you will basically not be able to pass it. 😅 It is said to be an extreme reaction, but in fact it is more like a double test of strategy and patience.
Today's mobile games are all about drawing cards, earning money, and automatic battles. There are very few such hard-core games that rely solely on brainpower and planning. At that time, the game was only a few hundred KB, and the graphics were pixel-level trains and tracks, but the design was particularly exquisite. Every time I pass a level, the sense of accomplishment that "I actually figured it out on my own" is even better than pulling out SSR ten times in a row now. I think this is the charm of old games - not relying on gimmicks, only relying on gameplay.
The developer, Beijing Gulu Marketing Consulting Company, is not very famous to be honest. The charging model is still 0 yuan, and there is not even an in-app purchase. It is purely for the love of generating electricity. It's probably impossible to find the installation package from back then, but if you can still find resources on any old mobile phone forum, I really recommend giving it a try. Believe me, spend ten minutes studying how to pass the first level, and you will re-understand what a "strategy game" is. 🚂
As I get older, I will occasionally think of these antiques. It may be difficult for today's post-00s generation to understand how we felt when we could play for two hours in front of a 2-inch screen, but this is the romance of the Saipan era. Without further ado, I will look for other forgotten treasure games.