Railroader

Railroader is a sim game designed for people who love laying down tracks and planning railroads. The player is given control of a railroad station, a modest $2500, and just 5 miles of track. The goal is to repair all of the bridges washed away by a flood and rebuild to the original 60 miles of track the railroad used to have. The game is currently in early release, which means it isn’t the finished product yet. Despite being unfinished, however, the core of the game is remarkably stable, and it is mainly cosmetic effects that aren’t quite finished yet.

Operations Level Management

While the game lets you handle the trains at an engineer level as well, it’s primarily a railroad management game at heart. Orders come into the train station via a waybill system, similar to Run8. An AI Engineer can help you get trains where they need to go at your direction, so you can easily handle half a dozen trains at the same time.

The locomotive side of gameplay is more simplified. Although trains can derail if they take a turn too fast, they’re relatively easy to get back on track again. Weather has little to no effect on the trains. Couplers don’t break. Although you can control the trains and move them around, they’re clearly not meant to be the main focus in gameplay.

In-Depth Tutorial

The gameplay is focused on railroad management rather than train driving, but it doesn’t leave you to just figure it out. Even in its early stages, Railroader has an excellent tutorial that walks you through the whole process start to finish.

Even without the tutorial, the game is fairly straightforward and intuitive.

Sound issues

This game is still in an early release, so it’s too early to say whether these problems are permanent. At the time this game was reviewed, however, the sound in the game was disappointing. All of the trains have the same sound when running, the whistles don’t sound very good.

Graphics also have some areas that are obviously in progress. The landscape is clearly in an unfinished state, with untextured buildings and not a lot of detail as you’re passing by.

We can expect these things to improve as the game gets polished up, but if you’re a serious train lover you may want to wait for the complete release.

This is a unique indy game that has a unique focus among train games. Although you can drive the trains if you want to, train driving is not the main focus of the game. Instead, Railroader is a cross between a railroad tycoon and a rail sim.

Pros:

• Great railroad operations sim
• Refreshing details in gameplay
• Solid tutorial makes learning easy

Cons:

• Train driving is overly simplified
• Not much detail at this time