I choo-choo-choose you! Remember that line? Yes, from the Valentine day card of Ralph Wiggum (Simpsons). I wouldn’t call myself a trainiac, but I do enjoy tinkering around with trains. When I was little, I had a train from Lego, which could run on a sort of remote-controlled track. Fast forward a few years, and we got Roller Coaster Tycoon with the train attraction, which I ran around the entire map of Dynamite Dunes. Fast forward again and Kalypso, known for Tropico, releases a new Train simulator called Railway Empire – so let’s dive in with another catchy.. tune.

Historical Simulator

Historical games always scratch a particular itch, since I’m a historian by education (not by trade). I once wrote a paper about the transcontinental railroad and the political consequences of this construction. So I was happy to discover Kalypso took up this exciting part of American history and worked it into a very… deep and specific simulator. Thus, the setting is theUnited States, 1830: ‘The New World’ is in its ascendancy. The industry is booming, and the race is on to establish the most dominant and powerful rail empire in all of North America. It’s time to outthink and outmaneuver your competitors as you lead your company into the 20th century! But first, a little bit of historical basis:

The U.S.’s First Transcontinental Railroad was built between 1863 and 1869 to join the eastern and western halves of the United States. The construction began just before the American Civil War, and it was considered to be one of the greatest American technological feats of the 19th century. Known as the “Pacific Railroad” when it opened, this served as a vital link for trade, commerce, and travel and opened up vast regions of the North American heartland for settlement. Shipping and commerce could thrive away from navigable watercourses for the first time since the beginning of the nation. Much of this route, especially on the Sierra grade west of Reno, Nevada, is currently used by Amtrak’s California Zephyr, although many parts have been rerouted.

The transcontinental railroad provided fast, safe, and cheap travel. The fare for a one-week trip from Omaha to San Francisco on an emigrant sleeping car was about $65 for an adult. It replaced most of the far slower and more hazardous stagecoach lines and wagon trains. The number of emigrants taking the Oregon and California Trails declined dramatically. The sale of the railroad land grant lands and the transport provided for timber and crops led to the rapid settling of the “Great American Desert”. The Union Pacific recruited laborers from Army veterans and Irish immigrants, while most of the engineers were ex-Army men who had learned their trade keeping the trains running during the American Civil War. The Central Pacific Railroad faced a labor shortage in the more sparsely settled West. It recruited Cantonese laborers in China, who did prodigious work building the line over and through the Sierra Nevada mountains and then across Nevada to their meeting in northern Utah.

Accurate?

Up to speed? Good, since Railway Empire does a great job of weaving small chunks of historical information into the game. Kalypso did their research and tried to be as historically accurate as possible. To give an example, you can purchase over 40 different trains modeled in extraordinary detail, and buy or build railway stations, maintenance buildings, factories and tourist attractions to keep your travel network ahead of the competition. Since trains don’t run on water (well, in a way they do), you’ll also need to hire and manage your workforce if you want to ensure an efficient train service. At the same time, it also develops over 300 technologies ranging from mechanical improvements to the trains themselves to workplace infrastructures and advanced amenities as you progress through five eras of technological innovations.

Rivalry

Sounds easy enough, right? However, you can’t just build and research your way to the top – the competition never sleeps, and to keep your business on track, you’ll have to survive against up to three rival tycoons. To get to the top, you may have to resort to more cutthroat tactics as you attack and sabotage your opponents through raids and industrial espionage. So, this is not your run of the mill train simulator, in which you can get on a train and conduct your heart out. It requires a deeper understanding of train- and rail mechanics to make your tracks and cities bloom as they should. The actual building tools are simple and easy to use — it’s just clicking different points together like a model train set. But you can decide if you want simple or complex rails. Simple rails will allow multiple trains to run along the same stretch of track and ignore the presence of each other. Complex rails make things more realistic. Under these conditions, you’ll have to learn to build logical railways that allow each train to run efficiently. This means learning how to take advantage of the signal system to separate tracks into sections so that trains won’t be blocking one another or waiting for each other for too long. Parallel and sidetracks will also help with this.

Goals & Gameplay

You might be wondering what the primary goal of the Railway Empire is. Well, goals are mission objectives that are listed in every chapter of the campaign. These Goals often involve things like increasing the population of a city, supplying resources to a specific project, and other things that tie back into the idea of societal expansion. Like any tycoon-style game, Railway Empire features a calendar system. An in-game day passes every few real-world seconds, so you’ll finish an in-game year in under an hour. And since most of the goals are yearly, you’ll have a challenge ahead of you. So, while you may start a chapter with a goal that’s about ten years away, it won’t be long before the time creeps up on you. As long as you’re getting a decent flow of cash into your bankbooks from your railway, completing the goals isn’t overly complicated. But that mostly depends on how you play the game.

Is this game for the trainiacs? I do reckon so since I had fun with it, but could not get the complex mechanics mastered in the way the game wanted me too. Combine this with textures that look a bit muddy and the resolution not being the highest (especially in handheld mode); it only decreased my gaming pleasure. But, yes, for a tycoon game, it looks good enough. The frame rate dropped a bit when zooming in, but that’s to be expected. It’s still playable barely, though the environments are admittedly not that visually interesting. The Great Lakes, Mexico, and Crossing the Andes DLC all come along for the ride with Nintendo Switch Edition as well. If you want more DLC, you can find some of Europe as pay-to-play extensions in the E-shop.

Conclusion

So to conclude, the Railway Empire is a decent simulator, and it’s good to see that Kalypso works on Switch titles as well. I’m just not sure if this will be a hit with everyone. To me, Railway Empire feels like a game for the trainiacs, but they might opt for a PC version since I reckon a game like this plays more comfortably with mouse and keyboard than with a Joy-Con or Pro controller. Still, if you need some train-fix, Railway Empire might do just the thing.

7/10

Tested on the Nintendo Switch.