Train Valley World

I am a fan of the other Train Valley games, so I was excited to check this one out. I got to the 3rd mission in the game, and a train I bought spawned out of bounds, rendering it useless. I restarted the mission, and the train did the same thing again. Not sure how a game that came out almost 2 years ago has bugs like that. I requested a refund.

Although it looks like a simplified game, the core mechanics dont work properly. Although the game allows you to build more than one platform on a station, the game does not recognise any platforms except the original to load goods. Signals are in the game, but trains dont always obey them. The biggest issue is when they can find a "path" between stations even if they are connected.

Until they implement "chain signals", this game is broken. I have yet to finish a level that involves signals because trains are stupid and always block each other and end up crashing.

Train Valley World is not as good as the first two games. It does a poor job teaching how to play, it requires a lot of sitting and waiting at max speed to gain funds, the signal mode where trains can crash into each other seems interesting but is more of a chore to play, and the music is grating and awful. Buy the first two if this one seems fun, but avoid this one. It also has the aesthetics of a crappy mobile game, so that's a red flag too.

It's the most boring game with trains I've ever played, but when I didn't feel like staring anything else, it was okay to unwind. But then I lost a lot of time due to a bug, and the illusion fell apart

Train Valley 1 and 2 were puzzle games; Train Valley World is more like a simple Railroad Tycoon game, with some puzzle features. Because it leans into the business aspects of a train game so much, it's difficult not to notice its deficiencies compared to more robust Railroad Tycoon games. The economy is pretty simple, though it does have pleasing production chains, like coal + ore -> steel, steel + fish -> canned fish. Traffic control in a railroad game can be a thorny problem. The original release of Train Valley World gave up on the problem entirely, and simply allowed trains to "ghost" through each other, though this results in delays as one train stops when this happens. This is still the "normal" mode for the game. The problem here is that the game's awfully easy in "normal" mode, with no real challenging decisions. Just connect sources to destinations and build trains, for the most part. The game now has signals. In "Signal" mode, trains will crash if they run into each other, and you have to designate rail blocks with signals. The game's more challenging in Signal mode, but the signals are still pretty rudimentary compared to many more sophisticated rail games. Sometimes trains will collide even though they're in different rail blocks. This happens when a train loads a lot of cars at a station, and the new cars extend out of the block for the station. Leaving some extra space around stations avoids this. Probably the biggest problem is that the game doesn't handle double-track well at all. A left-turn switch on the right rail can't cross a parallel left rail unless there's a considerable gap between the rails. Since the maps are already somewhat cramped, this means you can only really run double track with no turns. Generally this means you'll only run a single train on most rails, since multiple trains requires double tracking. This forces you into simpler solutions to most things, and means you often can't serve the full capacity of an industry, since that would require multiple trains. There's a technology tree where you unlock alternate locomotives and specialists who can boost trains. The locomotive selection's very simple, at each level there's a "standard" locomotive, and a faster passenger locomotive and a higher capacity freight locomotive. The idea's nice enough, but undercooked. You unlock locomotives and specialists with "stars" from completing levels. Since it's easy to 3-star every level, you'll always have enough stars to unlock everything in the tech tree as it becomes available. Still, at the end of the day, it's a decent enough train game, if not quite as good as the earlier Train Valley games, or a real tycoon game like Railway Empire 1.

not a good game, it is a broken copy of the Sid Meyers masterpiece, full of bugs, dumb graphics and half assed mechanics. why do i need to switch to "bridge building mode" Sid already showed you the best way to do this. ach

At first I thought the tutorial was broken, but the truth is worse: the whole game feels like it was held together with tape. Pausing the game already messes things up. If you do the tutorial steps while the game is paused, they often do not register properly. The train spawns somewhere else in the fog and if you unpause the game, you immediately get an invalid path. The same nonsense happens when you build more than one station next to each other - the tutorial acts like it does not count, and the routing logic gets even more confused. Trains end up on the wrong tracks, or they are not sent to the station at all and just fail with "cannot find route." And if you save, quit, and load back in, the tutorial is gone. Train signals do not work the way the tutorial says they should, and trains get stuck constantly for reasons the game never explains. It is also impossible to tell when one train is blocking another on a red light if you have a lot of trains running at once, so the whole thing turns into a traffic jam of silent failures. It gets worse. I had one train crash, and the sound and explosion effects just kept going until the FPS started tanking and I had to force quit the game. Deleting train tracks is tedious as well. This is not "challenging." It is unfinished. The mechanics are simplified to the point of being broken, and the game does not feel polished in any way. It has potential, but right now it is a bug fest. I could not finish it because it is just broken. How this passed QA is beyond me.

This is an excellent extension of the Train Valley series. It incorporates some elements of a Tycoon game (such as route management) while keeping the gameplay straightforward and efficient.