All aboard for a week of railway adventures!
Choo choo! 🚂💨
Under slight domestic peer pressure, I decided to playtest a train game, and I thought - hey, that’s a fun theme for this week! Trains! 🚂💨
Train games and I go way back. Nine year old Amy had a blast with Lego Loco.
Just putting this out there, if you were also someone who loved Lego Loco, 1) let me know, and 2) you can still play it here!
This week, I’ll have a look at some other train games. The hardest part will be finding games I hadn’t played before, as it’s a backlog challenge after all.
To get it out of my system, let’s start with my top three (aside from Lego Loco, forever my #1) train games, that I absolutely love and recommend:
Tiny Rails is the most gorgeous choo choo game in existence! This game ticks all the boxes: dopamine releases with every click, not too punishing when not min-maxing, cute graphics, good background sound, interesting perks to different carts, collectibles to unlock, another dopamine hit when playing the gacha machine, and overall just a super cosy experience chuffing from station to station, picking up goods.
Railbound is a charming and relaxing puzzle game where you lay tracks to guide train cars safely to their destination. With its soothing visuals, intuitive mechanics, and gradually increasing challenge, it’s the perfect mix of brain-teasing and cosy. I had a blast playing it as far as I could, but I’m generally not that good in puzzle games so I got stuck at some point. 😅
Unrailed is a co-op game that had no right being so much fun yet so challenging. The idea is to chop wood, mine iron, have your train craft rails while it’s also running on those rails, challenging you to gather resources and lay tracks faster than the train can run over them and, worst case scenario, derail. Of course you get in each other’s way, and there are other challenges like enemies trying to steal your things or weather conditions that hinder you. Absolute banger of a party game, in my opinion!
Train Station Project
Full disclosure: this is an alpha playtest, not a full-fledged game yet.
But honestly? You wouldn’t be able to tell.
Train Station Project is shaping up to be a dream for sim and management fans! You start in a run-down station, set to cleaning, repairing, and upgrading it into a fully functional station with a functional toilet, selling tickets and handling mail packages. From scrubbing floors to fixing electronics by physically unscrewing and replacing components, the mechanics are super satisfying. It reminds me of Gas Station Simulator, Viscera Cleanup Detail and House Flipper, in all the best ways.
👍 Even in this alpha stage, it’s one of the most polished and content-rich playtests I’ve seen. A few QoL tweaks (motion sickness options, gauges to indicate the toilets are dirty, and some station music) would be great, but I’m already hooked. This will be a day-one buy for me!
Locomoto
Playing the Locomoto demo. I know, I know - not really a backlog item, either.
Absolutely loving the atmosphere - cosy train sim with a lofi soundtrack? Yes, please! The idea of managing and customising my own train while taking care of passengers is super charming. The character creation is… animal parts? Absolutely adorable!
But... I’m really struggling with the camera. It moves around when I walk left or right, not in the direction I want it to go, and it’s making me motion-sick and dizzy. Aiming at specific items is tough, and I’m already feeling queasy, so I have to take a break.
ℹ️ I’ll definitely give it another shot later, hopefully with some optimisation (or just on a day when I’m less prone to motion sickness), because I really want to love this one!
Station To Station
Oh sweet, Station to Station, another voxel game!
Those of you who know me a little, probably know how much I love games like Stonehearth and Staxel, just because I absolutely adore the voxel graphics and the cosy atmosphere that inherently comes with them.
At first glance, I thought this might be something like Tiny Rails, but nope, this is a full-on puzzle game. Each level has specific goals, like connecting a wheat farm to a grain mill or a dairy farm to a cheesery. Every successful connection adds new buildings to the map, which in turn will have to be connected. The goal is to build a train network that provides all the farms with their necessary resources, and transports the products to the city that needs them.
One of the most satisfying parts? The way the world comes to life as you build. What starts as a dull, lifeless landscape blooms into a vibrant, thriving world with each new track you place. It’s such a rewarding visual touch!
That said, the gameplay loop feels a little… same-y. New building appears, place station, connect tracks, repeat. It’s enjoyable, but I found myself wishing I could stay in a map longer, watching my trains run, expanding cities, building more. But that’s just not what this game is, and that’s okay.
Apparently, though, I’m in luck! The Station to Station developers are working on a new game, Town to City, which is… you guessed it, a city builder in this same engine! I am STOKED! Exactly what I felt this game could have been, but wasn’t. Immediately wishlisted.
👍 Had fun with it, but ultimately, short puzzle levels like this never quite hook me. Would love to see this engine used for a more open-ended train management game, though! Wishful thinking, I guess.
Tracks - The Train Set Game
This game is different.
Remember, back in kindergarten, those wooden train tracks and little carts we would play with?
Well, Tracks - The Train Set Game is essentially that.
The idea is very nice, hits right in the nostalgia and has a lot of decoration items that are really gorgeous to decorate your train set with.
But I can’t in good faith recommend the game with its current controls. Things aren’t intuitive at all. Removing something is nearly impossible. You can apparently only remove the last placed train track, not any of the others, so if you notice a mistake or have a change of heart somewhere down the line, tough luck.
👎 Tons of potential, but the clunky controls make it more frustrating than fun.
Islands & Trains
Islands & Trains is a more modern take on the toy train set situation.
Build islands, decorate them with buildings, lay train tracks, put a train on it and then just sit back and enjoy your choo choo going around the track!
The game could do with a little more prefab, so to speak. An empty sandbox is fun, but getting premade empty islands or even an existing landscape with buildings already on it, to weave a train track through and customise it to make it our own would be lovely as well.
👍 There isn’t much to say about the game, it’s simply a wonderfully cosy train sandbox game that will hopefully get mod support in the future, so we can just have limitless decoration fun!
This week was all about trains, and it was quite the ride!
Managing a rundown station, puzzling my way through track layouts, but also: grumbling about controls and getting motion-sick from cameras, we did it all! There was a good mix of creativity, strategy, and nostalgia. Some games clicked instantly, while others left me wishing for a smoother experience, but overall, it was a fun little train themed journey, affirming all the stereotypes.
I’m going to say that Train Station Project easily wins 🔥 Most Addictive 🔥 this week. Cleaning, repairing, upgrading… always something to do, always “one more thing”, and before you know it, you’ve played for two hours when you only planned on thirty minutes. Easily one of the most polished alpha releases I’ve ever played, and I’m already counting down to release day!
🌍 Most Immersive 🌍 goes to Station to Station, but if I’m being honest, not because of the gameplay but because of the way it looks. The voxel graphics are gorgeous and suck me right in, zooming in on a train track and just watching the trains chug by. Absolutely looking forward to Town to City, the city builder that looks exactly like this, with gameplay even more up my alley.
And I guess ⚙️ Best Mechanics ⚙️ goes to Islands & Trains, because I do feel they did the sandbox building better than other, similar games. Given that this was just a demo, too, I’m having a good feeling about what they’ll add and what it’ll look like when it’s complete.
All in all, a great week of train-themed adventures. Next stop? Bring a towel.
Want to tackle your backlog as well? Or just want to chat about mine?
Click here to join the Steam group to share and discuss all of these games!
Not sure yet and want to see how I keep it up first? That’s fair, too.