Railroader

I bought this game four days ago and I have already sunk 40 hours into it. It's become a minor (okay, not so minor) obsession. I'm not sure I've ever been as swept up in any game as I have in this one. I'm normally very skeptical of any early access game with "Overwhelmingly Positive" reviews, especially when it's not one I've seen any kind of buzz about on social media. But in this game's case, the overwhelmingly positive reviews are very well deserved. I've been a fan of games like Train Sim World, Transport Fever, and other such games for a very long time, but this game in particular scratches an extremely specific itch: it's mostly just driving trains, but it has just enough of a management/"tycoon" aspect to give the game structure and give your simulation experience some PURPOSE, which a lot of the more hyper-accurate simulators don't really do. This one, to be clear, is NOT hyper-accurate (at least not yet); the train controls are simplified - you can do pretty much everything with four sliders (though those four sliders are satisfyingly mapped to their "real-world" analogs in the simulated locomotive cabs in first person view), you don't have to worry about things like boiler pressure or understanding how to flick all the right switches to start up a diesel locomotive. That's not a complaint, though; that makes the game less intimidating than a lot of the rail sims I've played. It's still early access, and it shows in some ways - the scenery leaves a bit to be desired, and the in-game world, for all of its enormity, feels a bit empty (passengers in cars are represented by numbers and not actual models, no people standing on platforms, no cars on roads and at crossings, that kind of thing). I have every confidence that the map's look is going to improve (and as an artist, I appreciate that this developer hasn't embraced the AI slop that a lot of devs have), but the truth is that even if the game never progresses at all beyond its current state (which seems doubtful - this game's developer tends to respond to a lot of community threads and seems very communicative and attentive), I feel like it's been money well spent even as-is. Excellent game - absolutely worth all the praise it's gotten here on Steam, and it definitely gets my recommendation. I can't wait to see how it develops from here!

Absolutely incredible game, with an incredible mod scene. It allows me to run my own fictional branch of my favorite railway (the Western Maryland) and helps scratch the itch since my home layout is still not completed. I can't wait to see where this game goes in the future.

Honestly very addicting. Came close to losing my job and relationships.

Very confusing and laggy, don't waste your time on this unless you're REALLY curious. Very buggy, difficult to understand. Managed to get softlocked in the tutorial. I think this holds a lot of promise but I'd really only recommend it if you're a diehard train nerd who probably already knows the controls of real-life trains. I only used this to join a friend's game and was very disappointed with the lack of quality and unresponsive gameplay. Hard pass, don't pay full price for this. Wait for a price drop or for it to get more polished.

The game had potential, it played nice and I enjoyed my time playing it. UNFORTUNATELY, after learning some things about some of the individuals in the their server and some of the devs, I cannot play this game anymore. I do not support people who sexually molest children, I do not support pedophilia, I don't support scammers, and I don't support people who claim to have killed their dog on accident... When in all actuality, there is no way someone commits to an accident for 5 to 20 minutes... All the while, smothering their dog with their hands. Yes, there is an individual in their Discord server who has done that. Yes, there is someone in their server who sexually molested children. Yes, there is someone in their server who is a pedophile. The fact of the matter is, when their moderators were presented with evidence, they claimed it was fake, doctored up, but people have been able to trace the messages that were posted in Discord to the exact letter. The fact of the matter is, defending people like that makes you a despicable person and you do not deserve future business. If I could get a refund, I would take it in a heartbeat and never come back. If Nazi's made some good chocolate, would you buy it, knowing full and well that Nazis made it? No, probably not. If you say you would, you're either a troll or you support Nazis. Do not buy this game if your morals align with mine, and steer clear of Century of Steam and Railroads Online for the same reasons. I think Derail Valley is in the clear, but I could be wrong.

This game is goated, everything about it is awesome! Running trains to serving customers, its an awesome sim. So why did i leave a thumbs down? Well the performance is garabge. On a beefy PC you still wont get 60 FPS. I know a lot of peple that refuse to play this game due to that reason, myself included. Such as shame for a beautiful game. Hopefully they can put the MOW update aside and work on the bigger issues before relasing more content.

After playing for over 250 hours, I can say that I know miss weekends from my childhood where my mom and grandmother would drag me to North Carolina, to go see the same river, trees, and mountains. But it also brought about the luxury of being able to have ridden the Great Smokey Mountains Railroad when they still had the "circus train" livery on their equipment from Dillsboro to Andrews, well before they scaled back to Nantahala. This game is early release and being developed by a small team, with I believe only one guy that is working full time on it and a couple of part timers. With this being said, the developer is active in the discussions to get feedback from the current players, whether that be someone has found an issue, or something that we would like to see added in the future. They're doing a pretty good job. As of today, it has been announced the beginning of what support the game is going to offer in the future for the modding community and the coding style for this. What is there to like about Railroader: The current equipment in game looks pretty good to say the least. There are a healthy number of steam locomotive options and 3 diesel locomotives available to purchase as you grow your small empire. There is also a several options for rolling stock that is available to gain revenue for passenger, freight, and mixed (passenger and freight together should you wish) service. As far as freight cars, you will only use one's that you purchase to deliver logs to a sawmill or pulpwood to one of 3 industries as you unlock that segment to gain money in game. The purchasable boxcars, tankers, and hoppers are currently only used to interchange outside your railroad for repair parts and coal/diesel for fuel. You can start fresh with a couple of available locations to service in a small area and a tutorial to give you a chance to get used to the controls and how things work. The progression to expand your railroad and purchase new equipment is reasonable. Their is an option to take loans from the bank to purchase equipment faster should you do so. There is a sandbox mode where if you want to start out and unlock everything at once, you can, but this can make for a chaotic day after you receive your first interchange traffic. The landscaping on the map feels very reminiscent of the area from Sylva to Andrews. There have been some artistic liberties taken to get industries and gameplay as a whole to be a little something for everyone. What I don't like currently: (Please take this with a grain of salt because it is actively being developed and this is likely change as development progresses) They're are only 3 diesels (SW1, GP9, and SD7) vs a lot of steam engines available and you currently can't use your own freight cars outside of pulp and log cars for revenue freight. But these are things that are sure to change in the future. Overall, it can be considered a grind to advance in game, but, this is the transitional era from steam to diesel power in Appalachia, there wasn't any high speed movement then, just as there isn't today.

TL;DR: Fun game, thermal throttles my 7900XTX and runs like absolute dog eggs. I would love to recommend this game. It's really fun with friends especially if you have the train-tism. I however cannot make this recommendation based solely on the astoundingly poor performance optimization of this game. I have a really beefy PC. 7900XTX, 64GB DDR4, i7 12700k, NVME gen 4 SSDs. I play at 2560x1440 and use HWinfo64 to track temperatures and power levels. My graphics card has been absolutely crying while playing this game, especially in multiplayer when another person hosts. Peaking at 111C on hotspots and over 560W total board power, all for a game that has lighting and shadows that look mediocre at best. In-game graphics settings and mods or not, nothing seems to have an affect on the performance. All of this on top of awful frame drops and bad stuttering when you put the camera in particle effects, and to be completely honest the landscape is pretty barren to have this level of GPU meltage. I can play Indiana Jones & The Great Circle on triple monitor surround (7680x1440) and get better performance than this game about trains.

Es hat eine ganze Weile gedauert bis ich alles übersetzt und verstanden habe. Dann habe ich zufällig entdeckt das man mit dem Handy Fotos machen kann die eine App automatisch übersetzt. Seitdem läuft das Spiel. ich baue es stetig aus. Jetzt warte ich darauf das es erweitert und verbessert wird. Wer Hilfe braucht kann mich gern anschreiben. Viel Spaß bei Railroader