Do you want trains? And delightful animation? And canines? 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 prepare 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 method that not solely will get the carriages again to the prepare, however extra importantly will get them there so as.
Railbounds’ trailer explains what I’m speaking about:
This sport is great. The puzzles are good and taxing, and ramp up in complexity at simply the correct velocity, however 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. The whole lot 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 kids’s toy.
There are over 150 levels to get by way of, most offered like a linear marketing campaign however some present as unlockable options to those. And it’s the timing aspect to the puzzles that makes the distinction right here; merely getting the carriages attached is commonly no huge deal, however getting them linked in the correct sequence is usually a nightmare, requiring all types 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 all the pieces is so brilliant and cheery and playful—helped by its laid-back soundtrack—which you could spend an age getting all the pieces mistaken however nonetheless feeling nothing however pleasure.
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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”.