Unrailed
Summary
Unrailed is an infuriating yet fun game which is addictive because success always feels so close. It has comprehensive cooperative play support. Not everyone will love the race against time, but it definitely forces you to strategise and plan ahead.
My experiences with the game
It’s a regular Saturday. I have eaten whatever food is left in the house and have good intentions of cleaning the house starting with the kitchen. I allow myself the brief respite from the trials of life and boot up Unrailed. Next time I look up, it’s dark, it’s 5 hours later, I must have time travelled.
I have lost so many unexplained hours to this game.
The game is a simple conciet, there is an unstoppable(ish) train which is heading for the end of the track. You need to place track ahead of the train otherwise the train crashes.
The fun and the puzzle element is managing the resources and the route for your train. You must navigate the train through terrain that changes on each level. Each level presents new challenges in regards to terrain, but what stays consistent is needing the key ingredients of rock and wood to make your track. You can employ a local or online friend or an industrious AI to help you in your endeavours of chopping down trees, chipping away rock, firefighting, collecting special golden screws, killing bandits and making tracks.
I briefly played with a local friend and you have equal partnership in the endeavour. He didn’t find the game as enthralling as I did, so I ended up relying on the AI’s reliable patterns of behaviour to keep playing as much as my addiction demanded. There is also a versus game play option which I didn’t play, but I am impressed there’s more than one option for cooperative play!
The AI is both a bane and a pleasure to work with. You have to get pretty speedy with the controls otherwise you risk the AI putting tracks down into a dead end. You have to be on it providing directions of travel to prevent this. Though after moving from drawing a line with the AI to having to point and describe with my friend in person, the latter was more of a struggle.
This game is very fun, and very addictive. I’ve played in the default endless mode without checkpoints because I’m a baller (not because I didn’t notice the option for two weeks and then seem to have difficulty enabling it).
I’ve overcome my mild addiction now that I’ve reached the final terrain but there’s definitely replayability as I’m still interested to investigate how the different carriage types change the game dynamics. The game’s terrain seems to be procedurally generated so no two games are alike. Plus there are AI animals dotted around. I have included an image of me getting utterly deluged with camels. Side note, the cows in this game do not sound like cows. They sound like the deranged screams of teenagers in pain.
Score
Cooperative 10/10
Story N/A
Fun 9/10