Railroader

For train enthusiasts.

I've been aware of Railroader almost since its inception. My daughter, a train enthusiast, was following its progress on the developer's YouTube channel. As soon as early access was available on Steam, she bought the game. She often relays her progress to us and pulls us into her room to see what she's done.

It's an indy game, initially developed by Adam Preble working on his own. At some point, he gained a development team and also volunteers who create soundscapes, 3D models, and other game assets. He documented his progress on his YouTube channel. He created the game for a very specific purpose: to simulate railroad operations. It's like operating a model railroad, but you don't have to lay out all the track and make all the buildings. As your railroad earns money from transporting passengers and freight, you can add new towns and spurs to your railroad. To make it even more fun for me, the operations model a transition era (both diesel and steam engines in operation) spur of the Southern Railway which operated in the Appalachian mountains of North Carolina. The towns are places I've been and the environment is really accurate to western North Carolina.

That said, the game has a steep learning curve. I'm not exactly a train enthusiast. I'm interested in trains at about the same level I'm interested in Star Trek and Astronomy. Which is to say, more interested than most people, but not nearly as interested as some. I liked the aspects of the game that felt like model railroad operations, but the game has lots of other details that I can appreciate, but make it complex.

In my four and half hours of gameplay, I didn't make it out of the tutorial. Partly that is because I lost my first hour of game play the first time I tried it. Not because I didn't save it, but because of a glitch in the game. I derailed my engine and tender while completing one of the tasks you have to check off when you are working through the tutorial.

I hadn't yet learned to rerail an engine, so my daughter told me what to do. I rerailed the engine and completed the task, but the game did not realize I completed the task, so it wouldn't check it off and let me go forward with the tutorial. I had to quit and save, but the save didn't put me at that task. I didn't have to go all the way back to the beginning, but it was a setback. My daughter offered to speed-run the tutorial to get me to where I was, but I declined the offer because I needed the practice and I didn't want to debate whether that would be cheating. It's a thing gamers do, though.

There were some smaller issues with the interface. For example, the directions were to right-click on something, but that didn't work. Luna to the rescue! She suggested I try ctrl-shift-click, which did work. Another time right-click didn't work and the solution was ctrl-click. To activate parts of the game interface sometimes just requires trial and error. I don't think I would have stumbled on those fixes by myself, though. 

I felt like they had their prepositions mixed up. It would say a car was beside me when it was on a parallel track, but it was really behind me on the parallel track. The game could really benefit from a compass rose in the HUD and on the map. It's very easy to get turned around. 

Another issue with the interface came up when trying to get the details for the cars and engines--the tutorial says to right-click, but it really needs a double-right-click. The tutorial was heavily text dependent and offered directions for future tasks that I will never remember when I actually need them. Perhaps the tutorials are also integrated with the game play, but I didn't get that far.

The player can switch between first-person and second-person view. You can also "fly" over the scene in second-person view, but when you are following your train in second-person view, like the train, your camera has momentum which makes it a little difficult to control.

Another glitch occurred when I was screen-sharing from my Surface Pro to the Roku TV. Upon exiting the game, it crashed, requiring a reboot. Stop casting before quitting the game.

I had hoped to progress to the level where I could play in multi-player mode without embarassing myself, but that will have to wait. My daughter was watching me play through all the tutorials. "Gaming is a social activity," she said. Which reminded me that I touched on that in my Gamer Autobiography.

The graphics in Railroader are stunning and the game play more realistic than games like Railroad Tycoon. What this independent team has been able to accomplish is amazing. The game has a dedicated fandom world-wide. To paraphrase the Brothers Osborne: it's good for some, but it's not for everyone.