Train Valley Review

Train valley is a small, but at times hard puzzle game, in which you need to send trains to the correct stations, but try not to crash them into eachother. All aboard!

Train Valley Review

introduction

Train Valley is a great little game that's easy to pick up and tricky to get right. Developed by Alexey Davydov, Sergey Dvoynikov, and Timofey Shargorodskiy. Some of you might know Davydov from another great game called Scrap Garden. The early levels of Train Valley are extremely simple, the difficulty ramps up quickly and you'll soon find yourself struggling to complete all the objectives. The game is balanced out perfectly, everything fits together very well, and the sound adds a certain ambiance that really makes it shine.

Train Valley is available on Steam for $ 9.99 and has a recently released Germany DLC.

Train Valley: A very polished game!

gameplay

The first level the game drops you into, is an easy and calm tutorial level in which the game tells you the basics, how to build rail and how to move your trains, and tricks you into a false sense of security about how relaxing this game will be. This all changes pretty drastically in the third or fourth level!

You'll have four or five train stations, all with different colors, and you need to connect them all together while making sure the trains get to the correct color coordinated station without crashing into another train. Train red needs to go to town red, while train yellow needs to go to town yellow, which is passed town red and train red is riding on that track now. Prepare for some challenging gameplay if you decide to pick up this nifty little game!

Each level has challenges in addition to the standard ‘make your trains do things and don’t go bankrupt’, like spending a specified amount of money, not demolishing any tracks, or ensuring your trains don’t crash. And that last thing is not as easy as it sounds. If you wait too long to let your trains depart from their stations, they'll just decide to go out on their own, and that is when bad things will happen! You need to rush to pull the levers on the switches, back up and hold all other trains and make sure that one train arrives in one piece. But before you manage to do that, another train has decided it has waited long enough!

The new Germany DLC adds new levels to the game, some even more challenging than the one in the main game! I saw a bomber fly over in one of the levels, and blew up part of the tracks, with the trains on route to that specific area! So mind cracking puzzle gamers go buy the new DLC on Steam and have some fun!

Train Valley Germany DLC
I have played through the first five levels of the game and I can tell you first hand, things get pretty difficult early on! In the first level, the tutorial level, you only have to manage two towns, with two stations. Each station had its own color, I believe red and blue. It was pretty easy making two different paths from and to the towns. And the trains came at a pretty slow interlude.

The second and third level got a bit harder, with some more towns, trains coming faster after each other and a slightly more different layout of the map. The path you had to draw was a little less clear. But I managed to complete the levels. Unfortunately not at 100%.

It was after this that the game became more difficult to play. The last level I played had a total of five or six towns, the trains came so fast that some thought they had been waiting at the station for too long and decided to go on their own. If you aren't paying attention to this, catastrophic crashes are unavoidable!

I most definitely had fun! But it wasn't the easy and relaxing simulation game I had imagined it to be!

SOUND AND GRAPHICS

The maps are scattered with forests, villages, and impassable terrain such as mountains or water, which get in the way of your train network, and they all look really good! Each level has a different visual feel to it, with themed trains and buildings which are a nice touch. The game has a clean and easy to understand interface with just enough buttons and controls. It plays really well on my PC and I think it can run on most PC's pretty decent. The sounds are great and really get you in the scene the game wants you to be in.

conclusion

Train Valley is a fun little puzzle game, for those evenings where you just want to play a quick game and don't want to be sucked in for hours at once. It's not very expensive and for a little less than $ 10,- you can't really go wrong. If you like a challenging puzzle game with nice graphics, this is the game for you. Just don't expect a full-fledged train and traffic simulator. A nice game by Alexey Davydov, Sergey Dvoynikov, and Timofey Shargorodskiy and I can't wait to see what they come up with next!

Pros Cons
+ Fun game for when you don't have enough time  – It gets hard pretty fast
+ Easy to understand controls
+ Pretty graphics and scenery
+ Good sound effects
7.5
Good

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