Train Life dev's next game is a taxi tycoon simulator

rockpapershotgun.com:

Simteract, the studio behind Train Life: A Railway Simulator, have announced their next project: a taxi tycoon sim called Urban Venture. In it, you'll be taking to the streets of Barcelona as a professional driver, picking up customers and obeying traffic laws to get them from A to B. That's the taxi bit. The tycoon bit comes a bit later, letting players build up their own business until they've got enough cars and staff to do the driving for them. It's coming to early access on Steam toward the end of 2022, so let's hail down an announcement trailer, shall we?

When I spoke to studio lead Marcin Jaśkiewicz about the game ahead of today's reveal, he described it to me as a bit like a "peaceful GTA", although whether the traffic cops will still come after you for running red lights remains to be seen. Assuming you're the law-abiding type, though (this is a simulation game, after all), Simteract's big focus has been making sure players "feel like you're actually there," says Jaśkiewicz.

"You're venturing into the living environments of this beautiful city, feeling the local driving style, meeting people who tell you stories about themselves, and building a reputation. You need to be a skillful but effective driver for your customers."

To help them achieve their goal of total immersion, Simteract's clever City Generator technology uses open source data to give players a 1:1 recreation of Spain's second largest city to drive about in, with a playable area of at least 20km squared and over 200 of its most famous landmarks, historical buildings, parks and all-important Gaudi sculptures to drive past. The studio's Traffic AI technology will also be on hand to recreate the city's famously busy traffic conditions, filling the