Teeny Tiny Trains

Genre: Puzzle

Players: 1

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Review:

(Note: Review code provided by the kind folks at Silesia Games)

Teeny Tiny Trains is a Puzzle game originally released in 2024 on PC and iOS and ported in 2025 to Xbox One and Nintendo Switch. This game has players laying down tracks for a small toy train to connect entrances and exits and ensure that all of the trains reach the appropriate locations in the appropriate order.

The presentation here is decent, using simple 3D for the objects and placing them on a somewhat abstract space lined in a way to separate it into an easy-to-see grid and backed by plucky, saccharine music that’s not bad but gets a bit repetitive before long. My one major complaint here is that even though the visuals are 3D, the game only allows the camera to be in one of two positions – at an isometric overhead angle, or a top-down bird’s-eye view.

When it comes to the gameplay, this is a pretty good take on a style of game I’ve seen plenty of times before, where you have to lay down tiles to create a path from one spot to another. Here, you’re not limited in how many tiles you can place, or what type of tiles you can place, though there are only so many different kinds to draw from. You can have four-way intersections, splitting turn-offs that alternate between two positions, and so on. Many games like this seem to prefer to limit the tools at players’ disposal, and it’s refreshing to free players to solve the game’s puzzles however they want.

The challenge doesn’t come from limited tools here, but from limited space and the specific requirements of each level. Every level has at least one entrance and at least one exit, with trains coming in from entrances in a specific order of colors, and each exit requiring either a specific color or specific order of colors. Using the way the pathways work, you need to arrange them so the trains get to the correct location, often in a specific order. This may require, for example, that you use a split in the tracks to loop one train back around behind the other, or split one off to hit a switch while delaying the other one so the first train has a chance to catch up. And as the game progresses, it finds increasingly interesting ways to give players new challenges to tackle.

While I really like the puzzle design and core gameplay here, there’s one issue that really made it hard for me to appreciate this game, and that is the gamepad controls. The game offers two possible ways to play, with one being to place down tracks as tiles and one being to draw them onto the ground. Both of these were a little awkward and took some getting used to, but once you do they work well enough. However, there’s one small problem here that becomes a major nuisance.

The button that players press once they’re ready to let loose the trains and try out the puzzle is essentially a start/stop button, and when you’re using gamepad controls, there’s zero delay between the two functions. This means that if you press this button for a second, the game will cycle through multiple on/off cycles of start and stop, and pressing this button with anything more than a feather’s touch will result in a coin flip of whichever state it ends up being in when you lift your finger off of the button again. This takes an otherwise fun puzzle game and makes it unnecessarily frustrating and tedious.

To the game’s credit, it controls much better in handheld mode using the touchscreen, where players can directly interact with the part of the screen they want to place tracks on, and can simply tap the on-screen button to play the level without issue. Unfortunately, the problem here is that the lack of a zoom function makes it too easy to tap on the wrong spot, or to draw the wrong shape for a track you’re placing. The game doesn’t have any sort of time limit so this can always be corrected, but it’s frustrating all the same.

It’s a shame that a few small flaws can take a very good puzzle game and make it frustrating to play, but that seems to be the situation we’re looking at with Teeny Tiny Trains. For the most part, this is a great take on a classic path-laying Puzzle, with some really strong puzzle design, but the control issues require a lot of patience from the player. If you do have patience enough to deal with these issues, I do still recommend this game, but otherwise I suggest waiting and hoping that a patch is released to address these problems.

tl;dr – Teeny Tiny Trains is a Puzzle game where players lay down tracks to guide trains from entrances to their proper exits, and in the correct order. There is some excellent puzzle design in this game, and a lot of player freedom to tackle puzzles in the way they want. However, some problems with the controls cause a lot of frustration here that results in gameplay that requires a lot of patience from the player. If you’re okay with bearing with these issues, this game is still worth playing, but these issues definitely mar the overall experience.

Grade: B-

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