With trains it happens to me as with golf. They don’t catch my attention in the real world, but they do in games. I could not be less interested in the history of the tram, without going any further, but I will never say no to a game of Adventurers on the Train. Sweet Transit has been in charge of uniting some of the genres that I like the most.
Sweet Transit is a city builder with trains. A middle ground between Rail Tycoon Y Factorio in which to flood the map of train tracks in which to move a product from one place to another until you make another inhabitant happy. A city builder turned into a puzzle based on traffic lights and bridges that make it possible to make the most efficient system possible. How could I not fall here?
Half Rail Tycoon, half Factorio
Sweet Transit starts the game by reminding us how valuable a tutorial is and how difficult it is to make a perfect one. Due to being heavy and cumbersome, the first contact with the game is hard. Not that there is much to explain, broadly speaking this is about having a city in one place and a factory in another. The peculiarity is that here the only means of transport is the train.
Wood, potatoes and the coal that your locomotives require will, due to efficiency and limitations, be very far from where you will start to create your urban nucleus. The more space, the more possibility of expanding your streets with houses for your inhabitants, markets to sell your products and a station that allows you to take everything there.
Among the many things that Sweet Transit does not explain to you in the tutorial is the need to install a tender when creating your train. It is not to carry coal, as I thought, but as fuel. Once prepared, you will simply have to mark an itinerary and send it in search of goods.
The itineraries themselves are added to the construction of cities and management of resources. Each building that your city grows consumes constant materials, so keeping the road network as efficient as possible ends up being essential. I’ve lost count of the times I’ve restarted my game thinking I already had it under control.
A very promising early access
I wasted countless hours creating complex automation networks in Satisfactory, and although the idea is very simplified here, the relaxation of building tracks with pacing traffic lights saved me the last few hot nights.
Once you get over that first abruptness, it becomes a game that catches you, it is sparse in content because of being an early access, but at least the news that arrives in order to warm up the launch in Steam Early Access they are hopeful. Both at the interface and control level, it was crying out for a coat of paint.
It’s not a game I want to burn right now, but I think I won’t be able to help it. It seems like one of those interesting projects to follow. In other games like Oxygen Not Included I thoroughly enjoyed the early access experience and seeing the game grow, so I wouldn’t be surprised to talk about it again at some point.
There aren’t many games that are challenging yet relaxing. Sweet Transit It keeps putting me on the ropes based on trains that don’t move forward and monumental traffic jams because I got mixed up with some traffic lights, and I hope it continues to do so for a good season.