Locomotion

Locomotion is a puzzle video game based on real-time control of railway exchanges, published in 1992 for the computers AmigaAmiga, Atari ST, Commodore 64 and MS-DOS by the German publisher Kingsoft.

The game screen shows a fixed view, from the top, of a dense and chaotic network of railway tracks, comprising a variable number of terminus stations and two-position exchanges. The goal is to get a certain number of trains to the right station within a time limit. Trains are composed of the locomotive alone, come out from time to time from one of the stations and constantly advance, stopping to wait only when they find the tracks interrupted due to an exchange. Each station is labeled by a letter of the alphabet, as well as the trains, which thus indicate which station exactly they need to get to (it can also be the same one from which they left).

The player, through a pointer, can operate each of the exchanges independently to switch it between the two possible positions, so as to drive the trains to their destination, avoiding that they collide with each other. To save time there is also the possibility of making all the fastest trains go by holding down the button.