All aboard!
Have you ever dreamt of becoming a train engineer? Gently chugging on the tracks, letting the rails take you wherever they might lead. Then Train Life - A Railway Simulator might be just the thing for you. Train Life, as self-explanatory as the name is, is a train simulator developed by Simteract. As a fledgeling train engineer and new railway company owner, you get behind the controls of a locomotive to transport goods and passengers across the railway system of Germany. Driving a train is actually quite simple in Train Life. The tracks taking you where you need to go, you only have accelerate and brake to keep your train’s speed under the speed limit and to make sure you do not ignore any signals. When you approach a switch section on the rails, all it takes is a simple click of a button to choose which track you want to follow.
When you allocate the route you have to take to get to the next station in your GPS, it will indicate which track you need to follow, which makes driving your train even simpler. Before you approach the next station, you have to contact them via radio to request access and passage through their station. If you do not, you will be fined and blocked from accessing the station’s service center. Now, I found it quite easy to forget to radio in the next station, and it felt an unnecessary feature in the game as of now, but I do see the potential for a neat radio system when the game is finished, not just between you and the station, but you and other traffic on the railway.
The basics of Train Life are just that: simple. Anyone can easily learn and master the game in the tutorial. Not necessarily a bad thing, as it makes the game a very relaxing experience without becoming overly complex, but do not expect to be challenged when you get behind the controls of your own locomotive. But as relaxing as it is, the game can also be quite frustating, mostly due to it still being in early access. And by early, I mean very early.
Features bug out frequently, such as signalling for incoming traffic on the tracks or the GPS indicating I need to switch tracks when it’s clear I don’t really need to. Even animals appearing on the track out of thin air, for which you will be fined if you supposedly hit them. In the game’s current state, the realism is somewhat lacking and does not play like a true simulator. I think braking and going in reverse on a track because you missed the previous switch without being fined or reprimanded in some way is not very realistic. I can only imagine the carnage if a train did that in real life. Simteract does release frequent patches, so these issues that the gameplay currently has will hopefully be fixed in the future.
The Railway Empire
Besides a train engineer, you’re also the owner of your very own railway company. To make money and grow your company, you need to accept contracts from the different stations scattered across the railway system of Germany, which is currently the only country accessible. These contracts require you to deliver cargo and goods from a station to a warehouse or processing plant, granting money and experience points for your company and yourself when completed.
The money you earn can be invested in upgrades for your locomotives, brand new locomotives, and expanding your staff for your company to generate even more money. Completing multiple contracts in stations in the same city will upgrade that city to provide you with more bonuses, which does offer great incentive to focus on a certain city you want to visit and upgrade frequently. The management aspect of the game is in a decent, but still very bare-boned state currently, it is also the aspect of the game I enjoyed the most.
Train Life has a lot of potential, and I expect it to only become better as the development progresses, but currently it is still in very, very early access. I experienced frequent framedrops which could only be solved by reloading a save file. The game crashed multiple times. The game couldn’t even register any of my keyboard’s inputs at some point, which caused my train to keep speeding up and eventually derail.
The environments are quite bland and full of randomly placed assets, many of which are the same as the ones you passed by a few kilometers back. The cities are more fleshed-out, yet still everything is extremely static. I have seen a few people who moved a bit and some driving cars, but the world seems devoid of life. The occasional deer that runs onto the track being the exception. I hope the environments receive some love from the developers in the future, because Train Life could be a lot more relaxing if you had captivating enviromental features to look at when you are gently chugging along the rails while listening to some relaxing music.
Train Life — A Railway Simulator is an Early Access release that shows a lot of potential. The foundation is there, now Simteract has to build on it, keep improving and listen to the community’s feedback and I’m sure that potential would be fulfilled. For 14.99 euros or your regional equivalent, it certainly is an interesting title to look at if you are a train or simulator enthusiast, but I recommend to wait for a few more patches and updates to smoothen out its kinks. In it’s current state, however, I cannot recommend it. But keep an eye on this one, it could be fantastic at some point.
Train Life — A Railway Simulator is currently in available in Early Access on PC.
Download code provided by the publisher.
