The first thing I learned about Unrailed! is that it’s a multiplayer railway-building sim. Okay, that sounds interesting. It’s certainly out of the ordinary, as I can’t actually think of another multiplayer railway-building sim off the top of my head (though I’m sure there are more that exist). So at least Unrailed! is working in a relatively untapped genre.
It would have been easy to just forget about it at that point, considering it nothing more than a mere curiosity. However, the more I learn about Unrailed!, the more excited I am to play it.
So, once you start building the rail, a train starts moving, and you must stay ahead of the train or it will derail. Ooh, now that’s a fun little twist that takes this from a laid-back simulation game to a high-energy party game — one with potentially hilarious results.
There’s also a lovely voxelated art style reminiscent of Minecraft (I would actually compare it to Stonehearth, to be honest, but I think that’s a reference that much fewer people would relate to). I’m an absolute sucker for voxel games. Call me crazy, but I cannot get enough voxels in my life.
To go along with the voxelated look, there’s also terraforming and light crafting elements. Let me tell you, if a game gives me the option to terraform and craft, well, I’m probably not going to do anything else for the next several hours. I love that stuff so much.
And you can play as a penguin or a dinosaur. Why is that a thing? I have no idea, but I love it.
You can even play competitively if you’d rather compete against your friends than try to work together. Okay, I can see myself getting obnoxiously competitive with something like this.
Of course, one element that hasn’t been touted as much is that you can play single-player too. The game will just give you A.I. characters to help you out. So when my friends are all busy doing other things, I can still scratch that rail-building itch. Perfect.
So how does it look in motion? Well, I managed to find this gameplay video:
And I can’t believe how much fun this game looks. Developer Indoor Astronaut (awesome name, by the way) somehow made an ingredients list of things I enjoy in video games and made them into a recipe that not only works, but it manages to feel like very little else that’s on the market right now.
Unrailed! came out for PC back in 2019, and I somehow missed it back then. However, it’s coming to PS4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch on September 23, so my chance at railway redemption is almost here.
