Blue Train from D.Clark's Lab

Play Tips for Blue Train

Get game points by unloading train passengers to build up town populations. The game ends when all towns reach their maximum population.

Building Towns

Build the towns by clicking on town squares to unload train passengers onto them. You'll get points as you unload your passengers, and discover that choosing town squares in particular ways can earn huge point bonuses.

Unloading Passengers.

You'll get one click for each passenger that's on board when your train first arrives at a town. Each town square allows just one click per train visit--the ones that you click will turn blue to indicate that they've been used. The squares are worth more points as they grow in size.

Unloading a passenger on this: results in this: , which gets you 3 points for growing the square to size 3.

Combos

You can score "combos" by having multiple non-empty squares between clicks. In this first example here, the top square is hilited yellow because it was last square clicked:
If the next click is on the bottom square here like this: then the result would be this "3x combo" that scores a total of 9 points. Note that this "uses" up all the squares in the span (and turns them blue, if they weren't already).

In this next example, the left square is hilited yellow because it was last square clicked (and the right square is hilited yellow because we're about to click it).
Then, if you clicked the square on the right, like this: then the result would be this "4x combo" , which scores a total of 20 points. Note that it's ok to have had a blue square inside the combo--you can't click a square once you've made it blue, but you can score on it again if it becomes part of a combo.

Rewards for doing Combos in a Row

Getting certain game helpers and rewards require not just getting combos, but getting certain numbers of combos in a row, without having empty squares between clicks, for 3 or 4 or more clicks in a row. This may seem difficult to do at first, but might seem easier once you've seen or discovered some more examples.
For example, sometimes you might want to sacrifice a long-span combo to get a sequence multiple short-span combos instead. Consider the ways you could play this set of 5 squares:
You could click 1 then 5, and a get a 5x combo. Or, you could click 1, 3, 5 and get two combos that are only 3x combos, but they would be 2 in a row, which might be what you need to get a special game helper or bonus reward. Consider also what might happen if you clicked from near the middle and jumped back and forth in a sequence like 2, 4, 1, 5...

Other Tricks

Bridges and underpasses count as "non-empty" squares with respect to scoring combos. Here's an underpass example with two clicks that count as a 3x combo:

Here's a bridge example that counts as a 4x combo:   And here's another one:

Finally

It may take some actual planning to get the longest and biggest-scoring combos-in-a-row near the end of the game. Note that those endgame big-bonus rewards won't be available until you've earned all the other rewards first, so don't wait too long to accomplish those early combos. Looking ahead and unloading a passenger onto a certain square ahead of time to avoid a gap might really pay off.

What's the best overall strategy to get the very highest score? Well, maybe you'll be the one to figure that out.