Toy Trains Overview – Cute, Cozy, (a Bit Too) Brief and Candy

TL;DR for Toy Trains
(performed on a Meta Quest 3 128 GB mannequin)

Harmless, solitary, peaceable, and playfully imaginative: Toy Trains—from Polish developer Something Random—captures the sweetness and freedom of childhood creativeness.

If you happen to ever performed with precise toy prepare units, or maybe Lego (or perhaps when you’re younger sufficient, sandbox video games like Minecraft), then you definitely’ll know the sensation I’m speaking about. It’s the sensation of solitary fantasy; of figuring out it’s simply you in right here, secure to pour your self right into a make-believe world.

It’s vulnerably taking your first artistic steps; telling tales by impressing elements of your self upon fashions and collectible figurines, and expressing your self via the easy caricatures of a kid’s understanding. Simply as taking part in sports activities buds the athlete, or taking part in chess buds the strategist, taking part in within the sandbox buds the storyteller.

So for folks who want to give their children a genuinely enjoyable VR sandbox to play in, Toy Trains is a good decide! And for grown-ups who want to really feel that harmless, peaceable nostalgia of childhood creativity—a creativity unbound by deadlines, shortage, complexity, or cynicism—Toy Trains has one thing in retailer for you as effectively.

GAMEPLAY

This can be a quick, easy, cozy recreation wherein you join a central location—like an airport or a group heart—to cute little homes on a map occupied by cute little individuals utilizing—you guessed it—toy trains (as effectively an infinite catalogue of railway items).

The sport has ten ranges of accelerating complexity. As you progress via the degrees, the maps may have increasingly more obstacles to work round—cliffs, boulders, rivers, and the like—in addition to new railway items that will help you circumvent them.

Every degree goes in phases. When you join the primary couple of homes on the map to the burgeoning central location, that central location will advance a section in its development and spawn new homes on the map. Then you definately’ll have to change your railway to achieve these new homes. This implies throwing out previous bits of your railway and including new ones.

To not concern, nevertheless, as there’s no restrict to the variety of items you should utilize or attempt, neither is there a time restrict to getting there! Toy Trains prefers to maintain an off-the-cuff degree of issue, assuring you that—with only a little bit of effort—you completely will succeed.

This informal issue might be interesting or aversive, relying on what sort of expertise you’re on the lookout for. As somebody who personally likes a problem, I assumed the gameplay was a bit piddly at occasions. However even I loved myself because of the sport’s charming artwork type and storytelling.

STORY

The vanity of the story is that you’re a baby who discovers a toy prepare set of their grandparents’ basement. You’re staying along with your grandparents as a result of your mother and father are on a visit. They’re professionals of some type. What type? You don’t know. You’re only a child. They ship you postcards from their journey. These postcards affect your creativeness and temper, altering the theme and tone of every degree.

On this approach and others, the sport places you into the naive perspective of a kid deciphering the world via contemporary eyes. For instance, to introduce one of many ranges, the postcard you obtain tells you that your mother and father are nonetheless “placing out fires” on their journey and that after they’re all cleared up, they’ll lastly have the ability to come house.

Each little little bit of the sport evokes a unified expertise.

As adults, we perceive “placing out fires” as a euphemism for fixing sudden issues. However in fact, the kid protagonist doesn’t know that, so then makes consider they’re placing out precise fires with their trains: The central location to be linked for the extent is thus a hearth station, and the gloomy temper of the extent—expressed via the rating, the lighting, the NPC dialogue, and the sheer catastrophe of the blazing wildfires—displays the protagonist’s disappointment with the information of their mother and father’ prolonged absence.

That is Toy Trains’ strongest level: its immersive, unpretentious artistry.

Each little little bit of the sport evokes a unified expertise. There are not any menus, solely an old-school prepare catalogue that you just leaf via to pick out a degree or piece of railway. The straightforward, but emotionally resonant story is instructed via the postcards you obtain and echoed via the dialogue of the imaginary little characters—referred to as “Railies”—whose lives you enhance via the development of your railways. Even the music is performed diegetically via a dusty previous report participant there with you in your grandparents’ basement.

All in all, Toy Trains is an aesthetic achievement.

DESIGN & MORE GAMEPLAY

There’s an ideal pleasure present in simply leaning in actual shut and watching a Railey because it dances or floats in a balloon or just putters about its enterprise, then turning your head and scanning throughout a whole panorama of busy railroads, cliffsides, and lakes.

Within the microscope: The character and map designs are cute and charming. The rating is straightforward, stress-free, and delightful. The interface is tastefully retro. And the setting is comfortably lived in.

Within the macroscope: Finishing a degree after which simply soaking all the things in is so satisfying. Watching your little trains doing loops round a whimsical, populated world evokes the dynamic creativity of isometric classics like Curler Coaster Tycoon or Sim Metropolis.

Toy Trains is a good looking expertise, however lacks issue or depth of gameplay.

The god-like scale and energy of the participant to form the toy world of the Railies is artfully juxtaposed with childhood’s lack of company and the powerlessness children typically appropriately really feel concerning the life conditions they discover themselves in.

Total, Toy Trains is a good looking expertise, however lacks issue or depth of gameplay. Once more, if what you’re on the lookout for is one thing quick, fairly, informal, and stress-free, then that’s not essentially an issue! However after my roughly three-hour playthrough got here to an finish, I discovered myself wanting extra.

The sport feels prefer it’s simply starting to open up into a very refined sandbox expertise round degree 9, when you’ve unlocked all the things within the catalogue. Because of this you solely get a few ranges of the liberty of expression that Toy Trains’ full arsenal grants; and solely a few ranges of the difficult terrain that that arsenal is supposed to beat.

Actually—from a gameplay perspective—it felt like the entire expertise was an prolonged tutorial for an extended recreation. I can’t assist however really feel like Toy Trains wants just a little bit extra content material: a random map generator, a free creation mode, and even simply one other ten ranges to mess around in with the absolutely unlocked catalogue!

This want turns into strikingly clear when—when you’re like me—you try to return to play the earlier ranges with the newfound artistic freedom of all of your newly unlocked railroad items, solely to understand that every degree can solely be performed with the items that have been unlocked on the time of your first playthrough.

There’s no going again to the start with the powers you’ve gained by the tip.

Total, the most important downside I’ve with Toy Trains is that there isn’t sufficient of it!

Furthermore—whereas figuring out you can’t lose does contribute to the sport’s stress-free vibe—it could be good if there was an non-obligatory more durable issue for people like me who admire the sense of accomplishment that comes from overcoming a problem. This could possibly be performed as merely as including some shortage, maybe by including a restrict to the variety of railroad items you should utilize, or maybe by limiting the time you must full the extent.

Nonetheless, this critique is firmly within the camp of private style, so I gained’t dock Toy Trains any factors for its ease. I’ll dock it—nevertheless—for its lackluster English translation, breaking immersion with its spelling and grammar errors. Whereas these errors usually are not too frequent, they nonetheless need to be talked about.

VERDICT

Total, the most important downside I’ve with Toy Trains is that there isn’t sufficient of it! I need extra ranges, extra problem, and extra Railies to gawk at. And that’s a reasonably good downside to have.

Whether or not you’re shopping for Toy Trains for your self or a baby in your life, I like to recommend checking it out. This recreation is a good looking, informal, and stress-free—if too quick—nostalgia journey to less complicated occasions.

Toy Trains will get a 7/10.

Scoring & Rubric

Scores are out of 10, wright here 10 is a masterpiece, 1 is unplayable, and 5 is simply common.
Gameplay has a heavier weighting within the general rating.

Gameplay – 7
Immersion – 10
Visuals – 9
Sound – 8
Efficiency – 8
Replayability – 2

Picture credit score: One thing Random / Toy Trains VR