Railroad Corporation

Review

On the main menu screen there’s New Campaign, Load Game, Multiplayer, Free Game, Options, Change Log Credits, Exit and Editor will be available in future updates.

Sand Box will unlock once you complete the first mission of the Campaign, where you can play with no special objectives or goals. You can customise your starting cash ($50,000, $100,000 and $250,000) and overdraft (Limit $0, $50,000 and Unlimited), difficulty, research department and contracts along with random options for placing of towns and resources.

Campaign Missions is where you can replay and customise any of the campaign missions you’ve completed. Like in the Sand Box you can chose your starting cash and overdraft, and you can also decide whether to play with the same objectives in the campaign, without deadlines or with no objectives on the map.

Challenges: here you’ll find scenarios where you’ll have an objective to complete. You can choose from three difficulties, I Can Take Anything (contracts require you to deliver more goods), Normal Difficulty and Easy Mode (contracts require you to deliver fewer goods). There is only one Challenge to start with, but more will unlock as you progress through the Campaign.

Multiplayer Game is currently in Beta, but you can Create or Join a game already setup by someone else. There are a few options to choose from and you can also customise the game’s objectives, overdraft, research and game mechanics to your liking. You can create a Public Lobby to play against random folks, or you can create a Private Lobby for you and any friends you may have stalking you for a game.

Selecting to play the Campaign, you will then have to choose whether or not to play with Time Limits. Time limits will make the campaign missions more challenging, rewarding you with more skill points. Skills Points can be spent on permanent upgrades for your campaigns in between missions. Choosing to turn off limits will decrease the difficulty of the game with lower rewards. Whatever your decision is, you’ll have to live with it as you won’t be able to change during your campaign.



After deciding whether or not to play with time limits, the game will begin with a briefing about the current mission. The first mission you play is the tutorial, which will take you over the basics of the game and give you an objective to complete; once completed, your real campaign starts.

Your starting place will be at a city; from here you’ll be required to complete the mission objectives. Your mission objectives appear in the top left-hand corner, and more objectives may appear as you progress through the mission. Also, in the top left corner is the amount of money you currently have, as well as Tabs for a list of locomotives and buildings your company own. In the opposite top right corner are tabs for selecting railroad construction, deconstruction, buying locomotives and game menu. Above those is where you can pause and speed up time, and details about your current location on the map.

Selecting the railroad construction tab and then selecting the track at the Train Station in your city starting point will enable you to start laying down tracks. You can just drag the track to another train station in the city, or to a place where you want to join. This can be done either in one movement, or by selecting waypoints and having more control over where the track is laid (you may save some pennies doing it this way). You might not be able to place track down if there’s a slope with too big an angle for the locomotives to travel on. When you span across rivers, bridges will automatically be added as you lay your tracks. Once you connect to both ends of the track from start to finish points you can select Confirm if you are happy (and if you have enough dollars to build that railroad). Once you have your railroad connection you can then set the locomotive to visit a station and collect or unload any of the resources which are required.

You start with $100,000 to get you on your way, and should you need it (I always needed it) an overdraft of fifty thousand dollars. This soon starts running out after paying for track and buying locomotives to run between destinations. If you go over your $50,000 overdraft, you’ll receive your P45 and its game over. To help boost your bank balance you will need to transport resources to where they are needed. To do this will require that you to connect farms or mines to cities or towns. Then when you have a connecting railroad, you can load up resources at one station and then unload them where they are required, and in doing so this will help boost your bank balance.

Some resources will require multiple resources, such as Steel, which needs Coal and Iron Ore. To produce steel, you will need to transport the coal and iron ore to a steel refinery. When you have steel being produced, you can then transport it to somewhere that requires it. Transporting resources to those places that require them will earn you cash so that you can build more railroads, upgrade stations, and buy companies.

You can upgrade buildings, buy new companies, build research facilities, and employ staff to work in the offices in your cities. These can be some of the objectives needed to complete a mission. Completing objectives can sound easy, but it’s not always like that; you will need to boost your bank balance as you have overheads to pay out each month. As you progress, cities will let you know if they have enough of the required resources, or whether they need new ones. Fulfilling these needs will help your bank balance grow and thus allow you to expand your railroad and business growth.

Using the research facilities, you’ll be able to upgrade your locomotives. You have so many scientists doing research, and selecting one of the options and adding more scientists to that project will decrease the overall time until that research is completed. It will cost you some of your pennies, but overall it can help prolong the life of your locomotive, increasing its pulling power and max speed etcetera.

After completing missions, you can upgrade your Portfolio in four categories, Geologist, Engineer, HR/Recruiter and Financier. You can use any experience points collected for completing missions to improve things like Track-Laying; it will be five percent cheaper, and the research starting price will be three percent cheaper.

The Game Options consist of: Game (Language, Auto-Save, Arrow Camera Move Speed, UI Scale On The Map, Screen Border Auto Scrolling, Run Game In Background and Pause the Game When the Save Has Completed Loading), Graphics (Screen Resolution, Full Screen, V-Sync. Max FPS, General Graphics Quality, Texture Quality, Anisotropic Level, Antialiasing, Shadows, Water Reflection, Vegetation Detail, Trees Distance Limit), Sound (Master, Sound Effects, Music and Ambient volume sliders).

The game is enjoyable to play; it looks good and runs very well and I haven’t had any problems so far. I found the game quite challenging but I’m not the greatest player at these types of games (shocking, isn't it?). The graphics look decent, the sound and music are good.

 

Review written by Piston Smashed™ for Zeepond.com!


Positives

+ Enjoyable but challenging game
+ Challenging
+ Has achievements
+ Has cards

Negatives

- Frustrating at times

Review Summary

Build your railroad network, then produce and transport resources around settlements and cities as you create your Railroad Corporation.

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Zeepond Rating: 7/10

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