LadiesGamers Unrailed

Unrailed Review (Nintendo Switch)

Game: Unrailed
Genre: Action, Arcade
System: Nintendo Switch (also on PC)
Developer|Publisher: Indoor Astronaut | Daedalic Entertainment
Age Rating: EU 3+ | US E
Price: UK £15.99 | EU €19,99 | US $19.99
Release Date: September 23rd 2020

Review code provided with many thanks to Daedalic Entertainment

Working on the Railroad

Unrailed is a delightfully simple pick up and play game with simple colourful 3D pixel graphics. You get to pick from a variety of pixelated characters. As soon as I saw you could play as a T – Rex I was sold. From there you are given a simple tutorial on the games controls. Basically the goal of the game is to build a railroad track all the way to the station. To do this you need to gather wood and ore by using the tools at your disposal. You then have to put the materials in a cart on the train which crafts more track for you to build the route piece by piece. All of this while the train is in motion, so work quick to avoid a crash!

The juggling act doesn’t stop there though you also have to make sure the train doesn’t overheat and burst into flames by occasionally topping up the water tank as well as stopping bandits from stealing your resources and animals just getting in the way in general. The levels will also sometimes cause other distractions like fogging effects and sometimes even tilting the screen. All these elements are randomly generated making each playthrough something fresh and new.

LadiesGamers Unrailed
A T-rex and a ginger bread man make a good team

Simple to Play for Everyone

The controls are very simple. You use one button to pick up items and drop them in the necessary cart on the train. If you have a tool like the axe in your hand you simply only need to stand near a tree and your character will do an amusing swaying movement as they automatically chop it down. They are the sort of controls which will suit the casual gamer so you never know, maybe grandma might want a go. (Edited by Yvonne: hush, you young puppy!)

LadiesGamers Unrailed
Every level is randomly generated making each run fresh and new.

Time for a Upgrade

When you reach the station you can use points collected from finding a hidden item in the level, finishing a mini objective and just reaching the station on upgrades for the train or new carts. New carts may include; crafting dynamite sticks to blow up the environments for resources (as well as your team mates). Don’t worry you re-spawn after a few seconds and descend to the level on a balloon. If you change your train engine the level morphs into a different environment such as the desert and later to an environment that’s out of this world.

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You can upgrade your carts as well as add new ones provided you have enough points.

Better Together

All this juggling is hard to do alone if you choose to play the game solo you are given a AI partner who you can instruct to carry out specific tasks. They are surprisingly competent. The game, however, becomes more alive when playing with other people. You can play the game with up to four players locally or even find people online. To my surprise I managed to find random folk to play online with. Unfortunately when searching for a game you have to choose a region from a large list e.g. Japan, US, Europe. A somewhat misstep on the Switch version as the PC version of the game simply lets you quick search for any available games. You can communicate with folk using emotes and generally my experience with randoms was positive. People actually seemed to want to work as a team.

Playing the game locally with my partner was a delight. It was fun working together to mine and build the track. Even when things got messy and the train ended up crashing we just laughed it off.

LadiesGamers Unrailed
The game likes to throw random elements at you to add extra challenge like a tilted screen

A Relaxing Challenge

Unrailed is quite the zen game. I just had a lot of fun mining for resources and building the train track. The main feature is endless mode which essentially has the game continue as long as you can possibly manage with each level you complete becoming progressively harder. As you reach more stations you unlock new characters to add to your pixelated roster.

There are also three difficulty settings as well as the ability to switch on checkpoints so you can tweak the experience to your liking. If time is short you can do a quick play session which just requires you to reach a single station with a pre-upgraded train. There’s also a sandbox mode that lets you experiment with all the carts you have unlocked so far. But if you just want to compete you can also play a competitive mode which splits you into two teams and has you attempt to out build the competition.

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Things are starting to get chilly

On Track for Greatness

Unrailed is just the ticket for simple pick up and play gaming fun. The experience becomes more alive if your able to share it with others but with the addition of a good AI companion and decent online functions you never have to build the railroad alone.

A nice wholesome game with simple controls that might just be the spark of gaming your looking for right now.

Final Verdict: I Like it a lot!

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