4/5 A little buggy, short, and poorly optimized, but with more than enough charm to make up for it. This game is fun to play on its own and has tons of potential for expansion. With a few additions and a little bit more polish (both detailed below), this game would be a perfect 5/5. If you enjoyed the travel mechanics of The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks (on the DS), you'll like this!
Bugs I encountered:
1) The hitbox for the throttle handle is badly misaligned. When approaching from below, I can grab the throttle well before the cursor actually touches the throttle. But when approaching from above, more than half of my cursor has to be touching the throttle before I can grab it.
2) I got stuck in a roundhouse (I think it was the desert one) after entering it at full speed.
3) After running into Big Fella at full speed (from the snowy side), the locomotive flipped around and phased halfway through him, and I was able to phase the rest of the way through him by just continually re-selecting reverse.
4) Sidings don't handle reverse travel correctly. If you enter a siding in reverse, it puts you on the same side as if you were going forwards.
5) Challenge goals are still checked after a shareholder is dropped off, causing a sound to play. This is most noticeable when whistling to pick up passengers immediately after dropping off a shareholder with the "whistle exactly X times" objective.
Suggestions:
1) When the train goes from leaning to not, have it drop back down abruptly like it does in Spirit Tracks. The current smooth transition, plus how speed multipliers work, make it impossible to tell whether you've leaned the train too far.
2) Add the ability to draw on the map. Was very surprised (and a bit disappointed) that this wasn't also brought over from Spirit Tracks.
3) More unlockable shortcuts! (Another thing I was surprised didn't make the jump).
4) More upgrades! I would start with the Gondola since it doesn't get any. Countering the challenges posed by each cargo type is an obvious mechanic.
5) Better tutorial. A few things were not explained very well (or at all) by the tutorial. Specifically:
a) What happens when you run out of water. (You slow down and can't whistle)
b) What happens when you collide with another train. (You lose a couple of hours, except the trains in Aurora which just squish you. I thought you lost a whole day since my first collision happened near the end of the day.)
c) What photo spots are and do. (They are primarily used in the post-game, but stopping at them makes passengers happier. Possibly more happy the longer you stay; it's not clear.)
d) What glowing blue spots are. The first several times I encountered one, it was to highlight a roadblock, but they are also used once (maybe twice) to highlight a place where you need to stop to pick up a collectable next to the track.
e) Clearer explanation of the demolitionist's purpose. You need TNT to blow up a rock on the track, and you need the demolitionist to place TNT on the track, but I don't think you need the demolitionist on the train to place that particular TNT. I think you can place TNT to sabotage other trains, presumably removing them from the track for the day, but it doesn't seem like that's worth the cost.
f) Introduction of the post-game stock buffs, slot machine, and sabotage mouse. I only found them by accident.
g) When the day ends (10PM).
h) Clearer explanation of roundhouses (they end the day early and you spawn from the nearest one when the day ends)
6) Add multiplayer! Ideally both co-op and competitive. Being able to sabotage real competition would make the demolitionist way more useful. Even just having a co-op player act as a switchman would be nice.
7) Allow the player to see when the day ends. Currently the only indication that the day is almost over is that the digits in the time start moving up and down slightly 30 minutes beforehand. That's not good enough; especially when you can buy 1-hour extensions in the post-game. By 10PM, I have completely forgotten how many extensions I purchased. IMO a good compromise would be allowing the player to draw on their map while in the roundhouse.
8) Show the player which roundhouse they're nearest to. At the beginning of the next day, you respawn at the roundhouse you were closest to at the end of the previous day. However it's not always clear which one that will be given how circuitous the track network is.
9) Make roundhouses more important. Currently they only serve as spawn point and way to end the day early, the latter of which you never actually need to do. A penalty for not ending the day in a roundhouse would be perfect. Like how in Stardew Valley you lose energy & gold/items if you pass out in the field at 2AM.
10) Add a minimap. The frustration of the non-intuitive track layout in Spirit Tracks was balanced by the fact that your map was always visible. In this game, the track layout is even more circuitous and you can only see your map by bringing it up manually. This severely hurts the pace of the game since bringing up the map, which you have to do constantly, pauses the game. The devs clearly recognize at least part of this since one of the post-game challenge objectives you can get is to not open your map. However this just ends up being frustrating when you've spent all day fulfilling all the other challenge objectives of your current passenger and you accidentally check your map. A good compromise would be to have the minimap only display part of the map rather than the whole thing.
11) Make challenge objectives pay individually, rather than all-or-nothing. As mentioned above, some of the challenge objectives are very easy to fail accidentally (another would be 'disobey every law sign'). Since the objectives are all-or-nothing, failing a single one renders all the time spent meeting the others a complete waste, and wasting the players' time is bad. A good middle ground would be to have an extra bonus for meeting all objectives.
12) Add some sort of competitive mode to the post-game. Currently the only allure of the post game is interesting challenge objectives, unlocking everything, the gameplay variations added by the temporary buffs, and the general charm of the game. Aside from the last one, these aren't enough to keep people for playing for very long. The challenge objectives can be more frustrating than interesting, you have almost everything unlocked by post-game, and "hehe train go really really fast" is really only entertaining once.
13) Make the brakeman useful. The ability to emergency brake without upsetting passengers isn't worth the cost of equipping him, especially since it doesn't remove TNT's sensitivity to emergency braking. Shorter braking distance, plus an auto-stop or stop distance visualization (for stations) would make him worth using.
14) Make lit train windows actually emit light.
15) Add VR support. The appeal and possibilities are huge and obvious!
