Train Crisis: Whatever you do, do not let the trains collide!

We all have traveled by planes and wondered the sophistication of the planes and also how accurately the air traffic is controlled with near to zero accidents. Well it is not just the air traffic control which needs skill and experience, our humble trains also need lots of planning and skills so that it can run with safely and with high efficiency.

"Train Crisis" is a game which lets you experience what goes behind operating trains on the tracks safely and guiding it to reach the destination. This game is presented by developer U-Play online. In this game you play the role of a rail traffic controller whose job is to avert train accident at any cost. There are trains coming from all directions and the train drivers are clueless about the other trains heading in their direction. Can you prevent the accident?

This is a strategy game and gets tougher as you move forward in terms of levels.

Train Crisis: Launch screen

At the launch screen, you are presented with few options to connect with other players, view leadership scores etc., along with the shop to buy the in-game currency.

By choosing the play option you move to the next screen where you can select which era you want to play. There are in-total 7 eras to choose from. Each era is set in a different time period with matching locations and rolling stocks for example, the Farwest Era covers the location from farwest like the rivers, tunnels and trains from that time period. Each era presents you various kinds of difficulties and is quite different from each other.

Train Crisis: Era selection

Within each era there are 24 levels, and you must complete all the levels of one era to move to and play the next era which is locked in the beginning.

How to play

After choosing a level to play, you see trains ready to move and the layout of the tracks and as soon as you tap on the screen it comes alive. On the tracks there are some spots which are highlighted, you need to touch the spots to change the tracks and send the trains to another track. As a rail traffic controller you control the movements of train on right time and right track so that it reaches their respective sheds safely and on time.

There are few options which can help you in playing the level, these are shown on the upper right of the screen. Options such as, getting hints on how to clear a level, making the trains run slow etc. Each option charges you in-game money. You earn in-game money by successfully completing a level.

Train Crisis: Tracks and train sheds

As you move to higher levels the number of trains increases and so the hurdles. As the game begins, all the trains starts moving simultaneously and you should operate the tracks considering all of them at the same time as even a single accident can end the game and you have to start from scratch.

Train Crisis: Avoiding accidents gets trickier

Train Crisis: Completion of industrial era

I could only complete the Industrial Era and unlock the Farwest era. In the Farwest era, you will see trains travelling through valleys, rivers, tunnels. I must tell you the tunnels are very confusing because the tracks get switched in the tunnels and its very accident prone.

Train Crisis: Collecting money from bank

Train Crisis: Tunnels adds more chaos

You will find some new elements in Farwest era like banks where the trains need to collect money, tracks blocked by big rocks which you must blow using the dynamite etc. Such elements keeps you glued to this game for hours. Each level challenges you to think more.

Train Crisis: Dare to control the trains?

How much it costs you: Not a single penny.

If you like this post or know any other app / game in the same category, let me know via comments section.

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Other posts in this series:

1. Airplane: Do-it-yourself lessons in plane flying

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Quick tips and tricks for Moto G

This post is dedicated to tips and tricks related to Moto G. It is now around 3 months I am using Moto G and it is a very satisfying experience for me. Moto G is one of the best handset with great performance and stunning screen in its price range. While using it I came across few features / issues which I was unaware of and I had to google for it. So, I thought of writing this covering post.

1. Using USB On-The-Go (OTG) with Moto G and related issue

I believe most of us know about USB OTG, still I will talk a little about it. USB OTG is the specification through which your device can act as a host to devices which have USB interface for example, your humble pen drive or digital camera etc. So, your android powered phone if it supports USB OTG (Android version 3.1 and above support it but not on all devices) can act as a host to your pen drive, this enables you to transfer data to and from the pen drive directly, eliminating the need of a computer.

As you will agree this is a very nice feature and comes handy. All you need is a support device and USB OTG cable (available widely and reasonably priced). I use this feature on Moto G mostly to transfer data to and from pen drive and it works just fine. The procedure to use it is very simple:

1. Just connect your pen drive to the USB OTG cable and connect the cable to micro USB port of Moto G. Within seconds Moto G detects the USB storage, now you can use any file manager (I use Astro File Manager) to access it.
2. Once you are done, first unmount the storage through setting -> storage -> Unmount USB storage, now you can safely disconnect the cable and pen drive.

Looks simple right, but there is one issue with it. As soon as you disconnect the USB OTG cable you start seeing a notification "USB storage removed" which you cannot dismiss.

Moto G USB OTG sticky notification

Now the question is, how to get rid of this confusing and useless notification. One sure shot way is by restarting your device, but it is an overkill to dismiss a sticky notification.

There is one more way, long press on the notification until the "App info" option is visible, select that option and it will take you to the app (System UI) information. Here you will see the "Force stop" button, click on it and confirm. That's it, the notification is gone. It is comparatively a neat option to dismiss that notification. But as a side effect of this, you device wallpaper will be switched to factory default, though you can re-set it per your preference.

2. Enabling display of Battery percentage

This is not something every Android user care about, but still it's better to have the ability to quickly check the remaining battery percentage. There are few apps available on Play store which can display the battery percentage and these apps work just fine. Also, starting from Android version 4.4, battery percentage indication is implemented in status bar that to within the battery icon itself. There are few benefits of using the native feature instead of installing a third party app as it does not add extra overhead on the device and also do not drain the battery. 

This native battery indicator is not enabled by default and you need to follow few steps to enable it. You need to install an app "Battery Percent for Kitkat" from xda-developers from play store. This is a simple app through which you can enable the battery percentage setting on your device. You need to reboot your device after you enable the setting from the app. Once enabled, you can uninstall this app, your device will continue displaying the battery percentage. Later, if at all you do want to disable showing the battery percentage, just install this app again, uncheck the setting and that's it. 
Well, this is not the only method to enable battery percentage, but it is simpler and clean.

If you like this post and also know other such tips and tricks, make good use of the comments.

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