Rail Route Review: Satisfy Your Rail Dispatcher Dreams

Do you ever take the train or subway and find yourself thinking “this line is terrible, I could do a better job running this show?” Well – now’s the time to prove yourself. Rail Route offers numerous real-life-inspired locations where you can design your version of the local railway system.

Although you start small, the game quickly throws an arsenal of improvements, utilities, and automatization tools at you to let you expand your network. But – the larger your network grows, the more intricate the challenges become. Before you know it, you’ll find yourself spending hours pondering and trying different methods to connect the opposite corners of Prague’s railway network. While this game may look simple with its minimalist design, the truth is far more complex.

While the game has quite the difficulty curve, there’s no shortage of learning opportunities. There’s an extensive tutorial, which also mostly serves as the game’s story mode. You can play the story mode separately for free to see if the game fits your vibe, before committing to its extensive sandbox. With different game modes, an extensive workshop, and the ability to craft your maps, you won’t quickly run out of content with this game.

Rail Route is available on Steam for $24.99, with its prologue also separately available for free.

Story – The Tale of Jozic

The meat of Rail Route is not so much in the story, as it is in this game’s enormous sandbox. Still, there’s a compelling and cute little story as you progress through the tutorial, which I’d strongly recommend doing to prevent completely losing yourself in confusion. 

Jozic’s role is simple, but fitting for a game like this.

You follow Jozic, a veteran train dispatcher in Prague who’s showing you the ropes of everything train conducting. The game cleverly uses narrative to push you through the increasingly complex challenges – from simply manually managing a single track to automatically assigning arsenals of them. Jozic will tell you small anecdotes about the places you’re connecting – like how he used to travel to Holesovice, and how he hated the waits. It makes the game a little less abstract and a bit more engaging like you’re working to help people get to the places they need to be. 

Gameplay – The Pure Joy of Watching Trains Go

Rail Route is all about the simple joy of having a train go from point A to Point B in the most efficient way possible, and your eternal pursuit to that end. You only start with a single line, but there’s the prospect of being the master of railway lines in your city, perfectly managing every single thing, to have it all come together in a perfect harmony of little trains that go take their journeys just right. That’s the end goal, anyway.

In reality, the road there is bumpy. Every single time you expand, your existing network messes up, so you need to adjust. When you automate, or get faster trains, the harmony of the schedule breaks. It’s a cat-and-mouse game, but that’s where the game also gets most of its fun. There’s a lot of joy in constantly unlocking and striving to get a train from point A to point B as efficiently as possible. You have a bunch of weapons at your disposal to fix inconsistencies, although I miss a rewind button if you realize you messed up, and you slowly see trains heading toward a collision. If you don’t like the challenges but do like drawing lines, there’s even the ability to play with infinite money or all the updates. Rail Route shines in how diversely it’s playable.

While the game is set in Prague, there’s no shortage of maps you can play. Maps are available across a variety of different modes. In some, you already get a fully built network, which you need to manage and optimize as more and more trains pop up. In others, you can simply start from scratch. The game can take you to all corners of the world – even to fictional ones. I, for one, am having a blast seeing my trains drive between the different towns of East Sinnoh, from Pokémon Diamond and Pearl. And with built-in tools to make and share your own maps, the content is essentially endless. 

Graphics and Sound – The Art of Minimalism

Minimalism isn’t an easy art style. It can just look barren and boring like there’s not a lot of effort put into it. However, Rail Route does pull it off well. By framing it like a computer program, it’s a very logical look for the game, and the minimalism helps new players navigate the map. It’s easy to see how and what’s going on in the game. And, to its credit, it’s used its minimalism to its advantage by giving players the ability to customize a lot of the game. Players can change language, the color of symbols, and even how fast they want the game to run. 

The minimalist lay-out works well, and it’s nicely customizable.

Its sound design is a bit of a mixed back. The voice-over of Jozic is excellent, and there are a lot of little sound effects that add to the immersion, such as the sound of industrial lights turning on when you open a map. However, generally, I found the sound effects to be on the annoying side. If you forget to let a train onto a platform, it will make one of the most annoying sounds I’ve heard in video games in a few years. The music, too, is monotonous at best. I suppose it fits the relaxing sandbox theme, but I generally swap it out for something a little more relaxing and interesting.