Rail Route

Genre: Management Simulation

Players: 1

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Review:

(Note: Review code provided by the kind folks at Untold Tales)

Rail Route, released on PC in 2024 and ported to Nintendo Switch in 2025, is a Management Simulation game that has players managing and building out rail lines to connect various stops, trying to keep their trains running efficiently and on-time while gradually upgrading and even automating their network.

This is represented largely through a mostly-monochrome interface of white lines on a black background, though stops and trains are depicted with colors, and routes or stations can be colored green, red, or orange depending on whether they’re planned for pending use by a train, currently in use, or being selected.

While this presentation and gameplay concept may seem somewhat sterile, it’s lent a fair amount of warmth by the game’s tutorial campaign, which is joined by a kindly veteran conductor showing players the ropes with a voice that sounds somewhat like J.K. Simmons. And this is all backed by a lovely relaxed instrumental piano and violin soundtrack.

I’ve got to say, I love the concept of this game, I love the presentation, and I was really enthusiastic to start building out my rail network. But when getting to the actual gameplay… well, I feel like that’s where things started getting derailed.

It doesn’t help that there seems to be some performance issues on Nintendo Switch, with menus causing the game to slow to a crawl on more than one occasion, making it very difficult for me to select the option I was going for. What’s more, there were straight-up glitches here, such as a screen-covering menu that refused to go away after I selected what I want and tried everything I could to dismiss it. Just within the first few hours of playing this game, I encountered numerous problems like these, that really soured the experience.

However, even if these problems didn’t exist, I feel like this game is not at all user-friendly, and punishes players who make what I have to assume are common mistakes, because the game makes it easy to mess things up in the first place.

Here was the sort of thing I had to deal with: I have a train that wants to enter a station, with a ticking timer making it clear that it doesn’t want to wait. However, there’s a train already sitting in the spot the incoming train wants to use. This parked train refuses to budge – I can only guess it’s still unloading or picking up cargo or passengers. So as the incoming train’s timer starts ticking down more urgently, I instinctively try to bring it into the other slot in the station, one that’s empty and not doing anything (it’s always empty, trains never go there for some reason)… only that was a bad choice, because it specifically wanted the busy slot for whatever reason.

I quickly try to undo my action, but there’s no “undo” button for this command, and now I’m stuck bringing a train into the wrong slot, and it can’t move to the second stop before properly stopping at the first, and even though these two slots are right next to each other, they could be on opposite ends of the map for all it matters. The first train finally leaves, so I decide what I’ll do is to wait until it passes and then have the second train move past the fork and back up. Except it can’t do that – it can only change directions at a station, for some reason.

Well, okay, so I’ll build a loop to return the train back to the fork to get to the right spot. Only building that sort of loop takes an absurd amount of space, and unless I have a lot of room to build it, the game won’t let me. I finally find a spot on the track with enough room, and get to building… only the game won’t let me build – because the train is already on that line, even though it’s farther down, it won’t let me build on it. So now I need to bring this train all the way into the second station, just to turn it around so it can get back to the proper slot in the first station… only it can’t, because the first train is now sitting in that station, and the second train is in its way, unable to turn back, but unable to move forward.

Just thinking about all the ways this game makes moving trains around more difficult than it needs to be gives me a headache, and it adds to that by making the spots you have to click to direct traffic needlessly confusing – there were times that I needed to click on the starting station to release a train along a route, but other times I needed to click on a destination. Then add to that automated routing terminals that kept insisting on routing trains the wrong way…

I really wanted to like Rail Route. Like I said, I really like this concept, and I like the presentation. But between being extraordinarily user-unfriendly and being a buggy mess, it’s hard for me to recommend this game. Maybe others who are a fan of the concept with the patience to look past its flaws can find something to love here – surely the amount of freedom the game affords players to design their own routes has a lot of potential. But I think most players will quickly become exasperated with this game and disillusioned with the creativity it promises, as I did.

tl;dr – Rail Route is a Management Simulation where players manage rail lines connecting stations and gradually build out their network. It’s a wonderful concept with a lovely, understated presentation. However, this game has some massive design issues that make it highly user-unfriendly, and on top of that the performance on Nintendo Switch is terrible, with nasty bugs. With more polish, this could have been a superb game. But as-is, I cannot recommend it.

Grade: C-

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