TimeTrain

This is a really fun and challenging puzzle game that I've found rewarding. The game doesn't hold your hand too much, the tutorial is quite simple and introduces the basic concepts, and then you're into the real puzzles, some of which have me completely stumped, which I view as the mark of a good puzzle game. It also has trains. I like trains.

Ultimately I liked it the puzzle mechanics enough to enjoy it, but there are some pretty serious deficiencies in QoL. There are some great puzzles that really stretch your reasoning skills in the brave new timey-wimey train world and the basic premise of synchronizing multiple space-time thread intersections plays really well with the overall theme. There are plenty of "aha!" moments to be had. On the flip side, many of these moments are spoiled by overly-constrained puzzle setups. For example, there might only be one way to logistically connect everything which will, evidently, solve the puzzle without really forcing you to understand why all the surrounding time/synchronization works. This is to be expected for tutorial-type levels, but it should probably not happen deep into the mix. On the UI/controls side, I think there is still some work to be done. In 2025, it's pretty standard fare to be able to view and set controls. This game uses the mouse exclusively. This would normally be fine for laying down and erasing tracks, but many levels require special crossing pieces which require an explicit toggle in the UI. Further, when it comes time to press play, it is cumbersome to have to click "+/-" elements in order to set the speed. This is especially annoying when trying to step forward to just the right moment in order to assess the solution state. Ideally, one would be able to 'scrub' the timeline forward and backward freely, but I understand this might require some non-negligible feature work. Simple hotkeys to pause, play, and swap track types, however, should be rather minor inclusions. Overall, my biggest problem with the game was with track-laying behavior. For a game where that is almost exclusively the thing you are doing, it becomes frustrating quite quickly. It never felt like the tracks were being placed down in the way I wanted outside of long lines in empty spaces. As soon as neighboring tracks come into play, orientations start getting jumbled up, requiring rotation keys to be pressed over and over until the desired orientation comes up. Compare this to a game with fluid placement/correction like Cosmic Express and the difference is night and day. In conclusion, really great idea for puzzle mechanics with some unwanted baggage in the controls department. Hopefully the latter can be remedied without too much issue.