Metro Planner: draw a map where lines never argue
The engineer's chair awaits
In front of you is a city map — like a metro diagram, only the stations are scattered across districts. A red pair, a blue pair, a green one: your job is to lay lines so that each connects its own stations and none gets in the way of another.
One drag — one line
The controls are honest: press a station, drag, release. The line follows your finger cell by cell. Draw across someone else's line — it will give way to yours, but remember: that pair is now stranded, and there will be no victory.
The main rule — lines never cross. On the small 5×4 map it is a warm-up, on 7×5 it is already an engineering challenge: you want to route everything in straight lines, and straight lines in this city somehow always cross.
How to think like a planner
1. Distant pairs first. A long line needs its space before short ones cut off all the paths.
2. Respect the corners. Middle cells are the scarcest: everyone wants to route through the center.
3. Do not be afraid to redo. A line that ran into a dead end erases with one drag — that is not failure, that is the normal design process.
Why this cures your real-city transit frustration
Because here you are the one drawing the interchanges. Every level is solvable, and solvable beautifully: in the end the map has no crossings left, and the diagram looks like it truly came out of a design bureau.