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Transport Empire

Transport Empire is a free-to-play 2D mobile economic strategy game where players build a transport empire from the ground up by transporting goods to various cities using locomotives, steamboats, and airships.

Publisher: Game Insight
Playerbase: Medium
Type: Mobile City-Building/Strategy
Release Date: April 09, 2014
Pros:+Vibrant 2D graphics. +Can be played offline. +Unique storyline.
Cons: -Time-consuming. -Repetitive gameplay.

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Overview

Transport Empire Overview

Live the life of a struggling entrepreneur in Transport Empire, a free-to-play 2D mobile economic strategy game. Start a budding transport business and grow your fleet of locomotives, steamboats, and airships as you start to make a name for yourself in the industry. Build mines, roads, bridges, and essential city structures to help you efficiently transport raw materials, goods, and passengers from one city to another across a Victorian-inspired landscape. Build your reputation and earn the respect of the locals while taking down your rivals to eventually enjoy total monopoly of the transport sector.

Transport Empire Key Features:

  • Economics-focused Strategy Game – unlike most city-building games, players focus on profits and expanding their business rather than amassing armies and conquering territories.
  • Compelling Storyline – follow a storyline that runs deeper than your typical city-building game.
  • Offline mode – play the game anytime, anywhere, whether you’re on a plane, a train, or on the road.
  • Victorian Theme – experience steam engines, steam boats, and airships, as well as outfits and architecture from the Victorian era.

Transport Empire Screenshots

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Transport Empire Featured Video

Transport Empire - Official Trailer

Full Review

Transport Empire Review

By, Marc Marasigan

Transport Empire is a free-to-play 2D mobile strategy game developed and published by Game Insight, a company known for their F2P mobile and social media games. The game was initially released for iOS on April 09, 2014, and is also available on Android and as a Windows App for Windows Phone, and Windows 8 and higher, as well as on Facebook.

Transport Empire is set in a Victorian/Steampunk era country called Storewell. Players are tasked with building a transport business from the ground up and eventually monopolizing the country’s transport sector. The game features high quality 2D cartoon graphics that look really great for a 2D mobile game. The background music and sound effects are also good and fit the game’s period theme well. The train sounds tend to get annoying the longer you play the game though. But the interface is simple, uncluttered, and arranged intuitively around the screen which is great for a mobile game. It's key selling point, in my opinion, would definitely be the storyline which has a lot more going for it compared to your average city-building game.

Learning the Business

Players start Transport Empire with a quick quest-based tutorial by an NPC that will also serve as your guide throughout most of the game. During the tutorial, players are taught the basics of constructing infrastructures like mines, railroads, and outposts, as well as how to upgrade them. Everything happens in real-time and players have to wait a certain amount of time for tasks to complete. Players are also taught how to purchase trains and how to buy and attach the right type of carriage for the job. Successfully completing each tutorial task rewards players with resources that can come in the form of silver, the game’s main currency, gold, which is harder to come by, and other valuable resources like coal, wood, and ore. Players may also be rewarded with experience and reputation points. Like businesses in the real world, building a good reputation is the key to a success in Transport Empire. Bonuses are awarded to those who network. In-game, building a good reputation with a city’s locals increases the rewards gained from transporting goods to that city.

On a Quest to Succeed

After completing the tutorial, that unfortunately can’t be skipped, players are then given quests that also serve as a guide while giving rewards. The quests move the story and the game along in a linear-fashion. It’s worth mentioning that completing the quests gives good rewards; rewards that will almost always prove useful in completing the next quest. Completing a quest, for example, rewards players with a ton of silver, which they can use to speed up the completion of the next quest. This is almost always the case and deviating from the quest will probably result in a long downtime as you wait for the next building or task to complete, or running out of resources which also results in considerable downtime as you scramble to meet the resource demands.

Taking on Contracts

Contracts are the lifeblood of Transport Empire. Depending on the building level, players can take on a variety of contracts that reward them with resources, experience points, and reputation with the city players complete the contract for. Players initially start with contracts to one city but will eventually unlock more cities as they progress through the game, until they eventually gain access to the whole country. Contracts come in various forms depending on how long it takes to complete them. The longer a contract takes to complete, the better the rewards gained. Players can easily speed up the completion of contracts, as well as other tasks, including construction, in exchange for the required resource type. Unlike other strategy games where speeding up things usually requires premium currency. As I mentioned above, players following the quests should have more than the required amount of resources available to speed up every task they need to complete.

Giving Back to the People

Unlike typical city-building games, Transport Empire focuses on building a business rather than specific cities. That doesn’t mean that players won’t be doing any city-building though. Players can build and upgrade certain city structures to gain reputation, while also profiting from the structure built. Building a warehouse, for example, increases the amount of resources you can store while upgrading the local train station and residential district allows players to buy better trains and establish a passenger transport system for added revenue. Players can also build factories to process basic resources into higher forms such as steel and gems which are required to build bridges and other advanced buildings.

Managing Your Fleet

A transport business wouldn’t be one without vehicles to do the transporting, and since Transport Empire is set in a Steampunk-themed world, these vehicles come in the form of locomotives, steamboats, and airships. Players initially start off with one locomotive, and can buy new vehicles anytime, as long as they meet the building and resource requirements. This can be quite tedious if not done at the right time. Simply following the quest line, however, should be enough to eventually build a transport fleet capable of handling the transport needs of the entire country. But having a fleet of vehicles also has its costs. Like in the real world, vehicles break down and need to be repaired to be able to transport goods from one area to another. Different contracts also need different attachments, especially for locomotives. Flatbed carriages are great for transporting lumber but wouldn’t be much use for transporting passengers. These carriages need to be bought and can be swapped in and out depending on the contract.

Money and Capital

Like most free-to-play games, Transport Empire is supported by microtransactions. Players can buy in-game currency, resources, as well as top-of-the-line vehicles in exchange for real-world money. These purchases can make the game faster and easier to play but don't throw off the game’s balance. It’s entirely possible to play through the game without spending a dime considering the amount of resources and virtually free speed-up options the game throws at you. For players who want things to move just a little bit faster though, then buying stuff would be the way to go.

The Final Verdict – Good

Transport Empire is a solid 2D game with a unique theme and a different take on the city-building genre. The graphics are great for a 2D game, the audio is good, the story is interesting, and everything plays the way it should. It can, however, be a bit time-consuming. Like most games in the genre, waiting is the name of the game since everything happens in real-time. For players who are into these type of games then this is one to try. For those who are on the verge of tearing their hair out at the roots while simply waiting for the game to load, stay far, far, away.

Screenshots

Transport Empire Screenshots

Videos

Transport Empire Videos

Playlist: Transport Empire

System Requirements

Transport Empire System Requirements

Minimum Requirements:

Operating System: Windows 8 / 8.1 / 10 / Windows Phone / Android 2.3.3 / iOS 6.0
Hard Disk Space:  400 MB available space

Recommended Requirements:

Operating System: Windows 8 / 8.1 / 10 / Windows Phone / Android 2.3.3 and up / iOS 6.0 or later
Hard Disk Space:  400 MB or more available space

Transport Empire is a browser based MMORPG and will run smoothly on practically any PC. The game was tested and works well on Internet Explorer, Opera, Firefox and Chrome. Any modern web-browser should run the game smoothly. The game is available on Facebook as well.

Music

Transport Empire Music & Soundtrack

Coming Soon!

Additional Info

Transport Empire Additional Information

Developer: Game Insight
Publisher: Game Insight

Game Engine: Unity

Original Release Date: April 09, 2014

Development History / Background:

Transport Empire was developed and published by Game Insight, a company known for developing and publishing various F2P mobile and social media games. The game was developed using the Unity game engine to achieve the developers' goal of making Transport Empire "graphically beautiful," as stated by Alexander Vashchenko, President of Production at Game Insight. The game is set in a Victorian/Steampunk era where locomotives, steamboats, and airships are the primary means of transporting goods.