Platform Panic - A Very German Experience

Platform Panic captures all the emotions you feel when travelling by public transport. You’ve been on the train for three hours. It has already been delayed by two. You really want to catch your next train home. Luckily, you planned just enough of a buffer to get to the right platform. You spawn somewhere in the train station, and you have two minutes to find and reach the platform from which your next train will depart. Meanwhile, you’ll have to dodge other passengers and try not to bump into someone. Sprinting into them even slows you down for a short time. There’s also a map of the train station in the centre, which will help you orientate yourself. Will you get there in time? Or will you be stuck at the station for another hour? I first got the idea for this project because I commute to Germany every weekend. I’ve stopped counting how many times my train was delayed, or how often my stop or the entire train was cancelled. One day, it just becomes part of the routine. Arriving at the train station completely stressed, desperately trying to catch your connection. So, I asked myself: You could make a video game out of that, couldn’t you? The game is presented in a Top-Down view. You have to navigate the player through the busy station, trying to avoid other passengers walking around. If you collide with them while sprinting, you will be slowed down, which can cost you precious seconds. The target platform is only shown in the beginning, so you better remember it. On the map in the centre of the station, the different platforms are labelled, so while you haven’t memorized the whole map yet, that’s how you know where to go. In combination with the timer, all of these things simulate the feeling of desperately trying to orientate yourself at a train station you have never been to before, while under time pressure. On the technical side, the game was developed using C# and SFML (Simple and Fast Multimedia Library). All the logic, collision detection, and mechanics were implemented from scratch. With this game I wanted to capture both the chaos and comedy of real-life train travel, especially when travelling in one of our beloved neighbouring countries. In the end, Platform Panic is part game, part satire – and a little digital therapy for frustrated commuters like myself.