Metro Rivals: New York
Metro Rivals - Dev Blog #1: Full Boost Ahead!
Hello, fellow Rivals, and welcome to our first Metro Rivals Dev Blog!
We're thrilled to announce that we're back and bursting with excitement to share what we've been up to since October!
We're kicking off a brand-new Dev Blog series that will bring you more regular updates on Metro Rivals: New York. Get ready for an exclusive first look at some gameplay, as well as a vital part of game development – player testing, featuring our new Dovetail PlayLab.
Join us as we share our thoughts and insights leading up to the launch later this year - it's going to be quite a ride!
Too busy to read the entire article? Check out the TL;DR (Too long, didn’t read) below:
- Metro Rivals is a new simcade game developed by Dovetail Games
- Race subway trains across a semi-fictional, near-future New York City
- Face fearsome Track Titans in singleplayer or race your friends in online multiplayer
- Gain Boost Energy by completing Quicktime Events and learn how to balance speed and style
- Procedural Generation helps us build convincing worlds quicker and more efficiently
- A lot of feedback has been gathered over the last few months, shaping our development process directly
- Join our Dovetail PlayLab for a chance to playtest our games and shape their future
- Hop onto the official Dovetail Discord server for more insights and a direct line to us
Since the initial announcement last year, a lot of work has been done behind the scenes.
Today we prepared something very special for you: two clips of gameplay footage of the latest development builds! While everything you see is still in early development, we think it gives you a good idea of how exciting racing in Metro Rivals can be.
Boosting your way to the top
Let’s talk about Boosts – these will be an essential tool if you want to dominate the leaderboards, and we’ve checked in with our Senior Producer Jordan for his thoughts:
Jordan:
“We've got two types of ways you can use the boost: the first, Boost Accelerate, will come in helpful when you’re looking for a quick jump off the line, maybe to draw some needed time back, but the second, my favourite, is Boost Brake, incredibly useful when looking for a prompt halt to hit that perfect stop and maximise your score!
No one likes to finish second, so pushing your train harder than you have before, reaching speeds higher than you knew you could just to re-gain the advantage, increases the chance you will overshoot a stop, or ploughing into a corner too fast, resulting in a derailment. There is plenty of opportunity to use speed to your advantage on the straights, though!
The music, powered by Reactional, will also build speed and suspense, which just adds to the pressure you find yourself now under!"
As you can see, your main goal when transporting passengers is not just to arrive on time, but to do so in style. You will have to push your train to the limit by boosting, so you can reach higher speeds faster. Refill your boost meter by completing Quicktime Events - the better you do, the more boost you get.
Jordan: “These QTEs are grounded railways events with an arcade spin that keep you on your toes and allow you to earn bonus score and boost! The quicker and more accurate you are, the better the reward!
Boost for me is one of the most important, fun mechanics in Metro Rivals! I personally save my boost and use it for braking, meaning I can thunder into stations, Boost Brake , and still hit a perfect stop! I find I use it a lot to slow down later for steep corners."
Racing through the Metro tunnels
Once you’ve got the attention of a Track Titan, they will challenge you to a nail-biting end-to-end race. You won’t need the accuracy required to stop at stations in these races but will still need to balance speed and… well, balance.
You might have just overtaken your opponent by boosting past them, but watch out, heading into a curve with too much speed will certainly make you fly off the rails. So make sure to watch the speed indicators, they will let you know if you are getting close to derailing.
Just make sure to not slow down too much, or your rival will overtake you faster than you can say “Newton’s Second Law of Motion”.
Jordan: “Each Titan has a very different personality and art style. This means even if you play the same challenge against different titans, the experience will feel fresh and new each time. You’ll need to keep on top of your train health, apply upgrades to better your performance, and really master the Metro to always keep an advantage - Oh, and don’t forget to use your boost wisely!
Every Titan Challenge comes with something great to unlock. New zones (meaning more New York), upgrades for your trains, and even cosmetics!
Beating the Titans, taking their zone, and finding new things to do is key to progression. The more titans you beat, the more you get to do!”
Building New York with Procedural Generation
They say Rome wasn’t built in a day, and the same is true for our version of New York City. However, Procedural Generation helps speed up the process by a lot. This Unreal Engine 5 tool allows us to move from an empty level to a readable, believable city layout very quickly.
Jordan: “By defining street splines, zoning rules, and scatter logic, we can rapidly establish a correct sense of scale and density, building placement and height data, initial street dressing, and environmental composition.
However, most of the development time is not spent placing assets but refining the rules that control placement.
This includes:
- Eliminating edge cases and placement errors
- Tuning distributions so environments feel natural rather than random
- Creating rule sets that consistently produce results aligned with the visual language of New York
- Ensuring regeneration of the level still appears intentionally authored
In practice, procedural generation is fast for visualisation but requires careful iteration to reach a level where outputs are consistently production-ready.
That means that Procedural Generation can lay the groundwork for a believable New York City, but our teams still need to put in a lot of effort and love to detail to create an environment that feels alive.
Jordan: “A successful procedural system depends heavily on asset preparation and metadata, which is largely invisible in the final product.
This foundational work enables the procedural system to produce results that feel deliberate, rather than automated.”
While our version of New York City might be semi-fictional, we still want it to feel authentic. The environment is built in layers: hero and landmark spaces get bespoke art, high detail, and unique silhouettes where players spend the most time.
Primary streets are mostly procedural but carefully varied to feel handcrafted, and background areas are simplified and optimised to read well from a distance without affecting performance.
Overall, the goal is to instantly convey New York’s dense, vertical, cluttered feel at street level, while key locations hold up under close inspection.
We're planning to show you a closer look at what we've been able to achieve with the Procedural Generation technology in one of our upcoming Dev Blogs, so stay tuned!
Your Feedback So Far
We're super busy working on Metro Rivals, but in the meantime, we've managed to let a few of you get your hands on the game. Hearing all your fantastic feedback has been awesome, and it’s great to see lots of positive thoughts we can build on.
Back in November, we attended the To The Moon Expo in Birmingham, where loads of passionate gamers and newcomers to the hobby visited our stand. They were the first to be able to play the game in public, and our Game Designer & UX Researcher were present to take in feedback.
Our visitors then had the chance to fill out our feedback form to help us understand what they enjoyed and what we could do better.
We're grateful to have been given loads of feedback, with many areas you loved which we'll aim to keep refining, and elements we can work to smooth out - Overall, it's great to see that initial feedback ratings came back at an average of 4.4 our of 5 stars, which is fantastic, and a great sign that we're heading in the right direction!
Some of our visitors came back multiple times to have another go at challenging the first Track Titan. Others praised the music and how it reminded them of a certain skateboarding game. We will talk more about how we use Reactional to make the game’s music feel dynamic in a future Dev Blog.
One of the best elements from our sessions was seeing the joy from both passionate gamers, as well as people who don't usually game at all - it's great to find ways we can iterate and improve Metro Rivals to be something everyone can enjoy.
We want YOU (for testing)!
In addition, we’ve been inviting people to our Dovetail PlayLab playtesting sessions, which we use to inform our development process even further.
Dovetail PlayLab is a program in which we invite people to our office in Chatham, Kent, to test our games and provide direct feedback. This initiative has proven invaluable for our other games and has been imperative to our development of Metro Rivals: New York.
We host regular playtesting sessions, both in-person and online, so if you’re interested, you can apply to join a future playtest here: https://dovetailgames.com/playlab
Raring to go? Here’s what’s next!
We have so much more to show you over the next few months - why not start with a livestream, happening tonight at 7pm UTC on our Metro Rivals YouTube channel, covering everything from this blog and more!
Make sure to join us when we chat with the development team and go into more details.
Following that, you can expect more Dev Blogs shining spotlights on other areas of the development process and the cool features of Metro Rivals: New York. We’re thrilled to tell you all about the features, like how we use Reactional music to make the game feel even more alive.
But wait, there’s more! Coming in hot next week is a Q&A livestream on February 18th, and beyond that we’ll be coming at you with regular updates regarding playtesting insight, developer interviews - you name it! And who knows, maybe even a cheeky first look at the fearsome Track Titans?
Join the Metro Rivals Community on Discord!
Have you heard about our official Dovetail Discord server? We have nearly 8,000 wonderful members who are eager for you to join!
Be sure to check it out and participate in our regular, Discord-exclusive Q&A streams. During these live sessions, our Community Managers chat directly with members about all kinds of topics related to Dovetail Games. Or just hang out and chat with our community, whatever feels right to you.
Thank you for joining us for the first Metro Rivals Dev Blog!
To join the conversation, make sure to jump onto the official Dovetail Games Discord Server, sign up for the newsletter and follow us on Twitter/X, BlueSky, TikTok, Instagram, YouTube and Facebook.
Metro Rivals: New York
11 Feb
Metro Rivals - Dev Blog #1: Full Boost Ahead!
Metro Rivals: New York
31 Oct
Introducing Metro Rivals: New York