Do you want trains? And delightful animation? And canine? And puzzles? And video video games? In fact you do, which is why you’re going to love Railbound as a lot as I did.
Launched this week on PC, Mac, iOS and Android, Railbound is a puzzle sport that offers you a cute little practice separated from its cute little carriages, and asks you to get everybody reunited as shortly and cleanly as doable. You, as a disembodied railway engineer, have to put a restricted variety of tracks in a manner that not solely will get the carriages again to the practice, however extra importantly will get them there so as.
Railbounds’ trailer explains what I’m speaking about:
This sport is fantastic. The puzzles are good and taxing, and ramp up in complexity at simply the fitting velocity, nevertheless it’s the presentation that units it aside. The trains don’t simply transfer, they lurch. You don’t simply put tracks down, they pop on touchdown. Every part is cute and enjoyable and has an actual sense of tangibility to it, as if we had been messing with a board sport, or a chunky youngsters’s toy.
There are over 150 phases to get by means of, most introduced like a linear marketing campaign however some current as unlockable alternate options to those. And it’s the timing ingredient to the puzzles that makes the distinction right here; merely getting the carriages attached is commonly no massive deal, however getting them linked in the fitting sequence is usually a nightmare, requiring every kind of trial and error.
Fortunately issues by no means get actually irritating; it’s really easy to return a step or restart a puzzle, and every little thing is so vivid and cheery and playful—helped by its laid-back soundtrack—you could spend an age getting every little thing flawed however nonetheless feeling nothing however pleasure.
G/O Media could get a fee
Whereas the sport is “out” this week, there’s additionally much more content material coming later in 2022, with the builders promising “new worlds with a brand-new mechanic” (semaphores) together with “accessibility fixes, together with a colorblind mode”.