Here in the UK, it’s pretty much the norm for significant delays to happen across the railway network every single day. Sadly all it takes is for one delayed train to create logistical madness. This turns into a headache as it becomes a giant jigsaw with signallers, control centres and train drivers attempting to bring everything back together. What the general public doesn’t realise is that if one train stops it has a huge knock-on effect, almost like a row of dominoes refusing to move. How do I know this? Well, I’m lucky enough to work in the railway industry. Once I saw Train Valley Console Edition was en-route and calling at the Xbox family of consoles, I knew I had to check it out.

Introduction

The next game calling at platform Xbox is Train Valley Console Edition, it is a fairly old title that started its life on Windows PC. Originally released in September 2015, the game received a very positive reception across the board. Developed by Lithuanian studio Flazm and published by Blitworks, this game is a unique puzzler revolving around train services and track placement. If you have grown up with a fascination with putting train sets together as a youngster then this will be right up your street. Prepare yourself for the absolute madness and chaos that awaits you!

Gameplay

The premise in Train Valley Console Edition is very simple. You’ll be starting with just stations and will be responsible for building rail tracks and connecting them together. Alongside this, you’ll be overseeing the chaotic operation of the network you create. You need to be on the ball and negotiate trains in the correct directions to reach their correct destinations. Everything is colour coded to make the flow easy to understand and follow, but be mindful that the more congested the routes become, the more chance of catastrophic accidents. 

In any railway operation in Europe, accidents are a big no-no. You’re reliant on well-maintained infrastructure, experienced signallers and train drivers who are constantly on the ball with their driving. Get things wrong in this game and you’ll pay the cost since everything you do is reliant on your revenue, which is very much realistic. You start off your journey in Train Valley Console Edition with some simple exercises of connecting your tracks and running just a couple of services from A to B. Like any game though, you ease in gently and before you know it, you’ll be bombarded with several train services to manage at once.

Is There a Tutorial?

Whilst you’re briefly shown how to connect sections of track, flip points in the route and pause and reverse trains, it isn’t very intuitive and often the prompts disappeared before I’d even carried out the action. It leaves you left to figure out and practice a lot by yourself and if you’re like me, I do like an in-depth tutorial before setting off with something. As with anything in life though, practice makes perfect and once you get to grips with the functionality of routing trains and building track correctly, you’re halfway there.

Content

What I do adore about Train Valley Console Edition is the variance in environments throughout the seasons on offer. You’ll be able to play through five different areas in Europe (1830–1980), America (1840–1960), USSR (1880–1980), Japan (1900–2020) and Germany (1830-2020). This variety also occurs throughout the plethora of different rolling stock on offer ranging from steam-powered engines to high-speed modernised express services. The development and art design team have done an exceptional job at trying to make each location appear unique to its era. For instance, they have thrown in mementoes of past days gone by like the Cold War and the fall of the Berlin Wall. Whilst you’re often too busy to admire the scenery due to everything going on, it is a nice touch and an effort to stop things from becoming repetitive or stale.

Time is Money!

As with any railway in the world, time is money and everything you do is revenue focused. You’ll need to ensure that these carriages make it to their intended destination to receive payment. If things don’t go according to plan then expect to lose money and thus sending trains out late hits you in the pocket as well, very much like real life. Laying track on fresh flat ground comes at a reasonable cost, but laying in certain conditions may cost you more. You may have to plan your route to go around certain objects or uneven terrain. I really enjoyed the financial aspects of the game and keeping an eye on making sure I could maximise my incoming and reduce my outgoings.

The End Goal

Throughout the story mode, each region is displayed as stamps, complete an area in the region and then the book is stamped and you move on to the next. Each portion of the game has a series of tasks to strive to achieve and completing these will finish the level. During the more difficult levels, you may find like me that you’ll be demolishing what you’ve attempted to construct and re-building to see if you can improve your infrastructure. The game can be sped up, slowed down or paused completely, giving you the opportunity to fine-tune and adapt to the way you want to play things out. The simplistic features of how things work lead to real complex operations that will need thinking power to achieve your goals. Sticking things out through your own frustrating mistakes evolves into satisfying gameplay when everything runs smoothly and you see the cash flowing into the green.

How Does It Look?

Visually the game is quite basic but then again it isn’t exactly hefty in terms of size for hard drive space. This has also made an appearance on iOS for mobile devices so whilst it isn’t all bells and whistles when it comes to graphics, it does what it needs to and does it well. Whilst the UI is fairly simplistic, it does take some getting used to amongst those slightly irritating controls. The one thing that really needs work is the cursor that is used to navigate around the screen. It is so small and difficult to see as it almost blends in with every backdrop to the point where sometimes you end up failing in what you’re doing because you’re losing critical seconds spending time looking for it. This made me use the pause button repeatedly in order to correct and adjust myself. I won’t lie, I found it a constant annoyance and it is a shame because there is a fantastic game here. If the team made the cursor bigger or changed it to a bolder colour it would improve the flow of the game.

In Conclusion

For the price point, you’re getting a feast of content here with Train Valley Console Edition. With everything that was seemingly on offer with the PC version appearing here. Admittedly I was instantly frustrated with the clunky and difficult control scheme, but you do learn to adjust, just about. When it finally clicks with you, then slotting sections of track together and figuring things out whilst watching the metal snakes flow swimmingly through your methodology and becomes both rewarding and addictive. 

The end result here is a title that ideally should have been on the console before now since it’s now nearly seven years old. The fact it’s a little dated in terms of visuals doesn’t matter because there’s a cleverly crafted game here that really gets you thinking outside of the box. If you have the patience to get to grips with the chaotic madness that ensues then you’ll absolutely love this one. Personally, I’d say that if you own a PC then it would still be the best way to play this one, but I’d still recommend a purchase on console if you don’t.