Unrailed! is a hyper-addictive little game about building railroads while a train is relentlessly bearing down on you. When it comes to moving goods from point A to Point B, this is probably not the most efficient means of transport (it seems smarter to move goods on a track that was pro-actively built rather than one that’s in the process of being built on the fly). However, when it comes to creating a super-fun gaming experience with that short-burst, “one-more-run” appeal, the formula is quite a good one.
If you play alone, you are given a robotic helper. The robot can perform automated tasks, but if you don’t micromanage this metallic manual laborer, it will do things that baffle you. Assign it to chop wood and look away, and when you check back in with the robot it will have defoliated an entire forest. The same goes for ore — this thing is a mountain-destroying machine. If you want it to build a rail, however, you have to very carefully specify the route, otherwise the robot will just idle.
All of these things make the game more challenging, and there’s nothing wrong with a bit of a challenge. However, if you add a second player, you can have a thinking, breathing human who will co-manage your growing list of tasks alongside you. I can only imagine that adding a third and fourth human player would continue this trend.
I did spend quite a bit of time with the game’s single-player portion, as well as its stubborn little robot helper. The first time I played Unrailed!, I found myself unexpectedly staying up until 4 a.m., losing all track of time and forgetting about the necessity of sleep. Like I said in the opening paragraph, this is an addictive game.
But later on, I was able to play Unrailed! with my friend and fellow Half-Glass Gamer Julian. What we discovered was that the game is still insanely addictive, and the hour and a half we spent with its multiplayer seemed like twenty minutes tops.
Another thing we discovered was that the game’s systems seem to work better this way. Unrailed! was designed, after all, as a multiplayer experience. The robot is simply a band-aid for this to keep players interested when they can’t arrange a co-op session. When you have two people strategizing together, it is possible to have the other player get in your way, but it’s also possible to synchronize your actions and form the sort of coordinated effort that resembles a well-oiled machine.
We laughed and joked as our rail-building empire ended in ruin, but it only ended in ruin after having successfully made it into the game’s third biome. We had a very long stretch of success before encountering our colossal failure. And that meant we both were encouraged to try again.
If you’re wondering if you should pick up Unrailed! for yourself, I would say go for it. Even as a solo player, there’s an incredibly enjoyable game here. But if you have the opportunity, you should absolutely get a group of friends together and lay a fat stack of track.
