"Glorious with three friends, hollow with bots and stutter"
About
A real-time co-op game about laying track ahead of a train that never stops moving. You and up to seven others chop trees, mine ore, forge rails and bolt them down across procedurally generated biomes, while wagon modifications and permanent upgrades reshape how each run plays. New additions include a lava boss, a space biome and a 4v4 battle mode.
Verdict
With three other humans pulling in the same direction, the scramble to feed the forge while the engine bears down on an unfinished bridge produces the kind of shouting-over-each-other panic the original nailed. Solo, the bots fumble the simplest hand-off and the whole thing collapses. Then there are the microstutters and freezes that turn a tight run into a coin flip.
You'll like it if …
- +you have a full lobby of friends to coordinate with
- +you enjoy frantic shouting-over-each-other co-op under a timer
- +you like tinkering with wagon mods and upgrades to reshape each run
You'll dislike it if …
- −you mostly play solo or lean on bots
- −you want a fresh puzzle each run rather than the same hand-off scramble
Breakdown
- +Frantic resource hand-offs under a timer create the shouting-over-each-other panic the original nailed
- +Easy to teach, hard to coordinate well, which is exactly what a co-op panic game wants
- −Bot AI fumbles the simplest hand-off and the whole thing collapses in single-player
- −Moment-to-moment loop is frantic resource hand-offs under a timer rather than a fresh puzzle each run
- +Wagon modifications and permanent upgrades make each run's train feel genuinely different
- +Procedural worlds, stacking permanent upgrades and several modes keep groups coming back, with 50-hour playtimes common
- +New biomes and the lava boss give 3-4 player groups fresh tracks to fail on
- −Nearly all value lives in a full lobby of humans; solo experience and smaller groups get significantly less from the purchase
- +Biomes give personality through thematic conceit of a train that won't wait without asking for narrative weight
- +Bright, cute and readable art direction matters when four people need to parse a board at a glance
- +Clean UI supports the chaos of four-player coordination
- −Remastered soundtrack lands somewhere between fine and forgettable
- −Default audio runs hot
- −Microstutters and freezes turn a tight run into a coin flip
- −Game-breaking bugs survive past full release, like tools vanishing without respawning
- −Connection drops plague multiplayer sessions
- −Performance split is brutal: some see clean performance while others fight constant microstutters and one-second freezes
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