Recent reviews by Wings & Strings

[Addendum: the developer or a hired moderator of the game's steam page has banned former team members including myself and others from steam discussion of what's been happening, but they cannot stop me from updating my review to relay as comprehensive and thorough of an explanation of what happened with this game from an inside perspective.]

Good lord, where do I begin...

Railroads Online was initially promised as a free update and engine port to the former game, American Railroads: Summit River & Pine Valley, but the lead developer, Keume, who is the sole person with code access and the sole receiver of any revenue from this game, pulled the rug out and made it a new, full-priced game, resulting in justified discontent of the community and thus leaving ARR to become abandonware. Since then, the lead developer's lack of railroading knowledge, communication, project management skills, and coding ability has made any attempt by unpaid volunteer teams to aid in the completion of the game untenable, and modelers' content becomes distorted as they have no agency in the lead's implementation on the increasingly rare occasions when it does make it into the game. There have been three community managers, all of which have now resigned, which had to face the same issue: the lead dev cannot maintain proper communication with them or provide concrete information about the game's direction or progress, and thus anything they approve for the Community Manager to share with the community becomes contradicted or unable to be followed up on, and the CM, inevitably and unfairly, has to take flack for it.

Models originally intended to be in the base game, following plans he had previously approved by the lead dev and later rescinded, were threatened with being cut from the game and having to be added via steam workshop only instead of official internal content. Features the community had requested for months including tunnels, were developed on the side by team members, demonstrated as fully viable, and offered ready-to-go for full implementation but were dismissed. New maps based on real 3' railroading locations, realistic firing and steam sims, new industry chains, a full tech tree of locomotives and rolling stock, etc., were also worked on and planned, but were also snubbed. It took months of the team pressuring the lead dev just to get realistic tractive effort implemented. We attempted to schedule meetings with Keume to try to get him to commit to the direction of the game, to establish a roadmap of what players could expect, and on what time scale. In the first roadmap meeting, he did not show up. In the second roadmap meeting, he could not commit to any concrete details about the game. This was to become a recurring pattern that did not change over the course of development.

Features initially planned for full release were pushed off to post-1.0 release and then never spoken of again. Since then, the game has been stuck in development purgatory for over six months for the "spline update," a complete rewrite which not only removes all physics interactions, but also is worse optimized than the prior track system and full of more bugs than a rotten log, despite many people trying to explain to the lead dev that the new splines will not fix the multiplayer stability issues it claims to fix and that the old splines could be optimized to improve performance far beyond where the game is heading.

Since the first team's mass exodus, a second team has tried and failed to steer the lead dev onto a better path like the team before it, but features have only continued to go downhill or be removed as the new team realizes that the lead dev will not accept help when and where he desperately needs it.

The game then was subject to an internal conflict with a co-developer, who tried to disparage a former community manager and leaked private conversations with them, and that community manager was forced to resign after mistreatment. The game's discord server was purged of any mention of the unprofessional and inappropriate behavior and is now on lockdown with most channels deleted or hidden.

For what it's worth, said co-developer has also now left the project, citing frustration with Keume's mismanagement of the project, and ultimately the game appears to be back down to a single developer, which is effectively how it always functions regardless of who is on the team, as those teams ultimately are given no ability to help keume fix the many broken aspects of the game which seem to worsen with every update.

Video and screenshots of the internal build (referred to as the "dev branch") have shown the extent of the spline update's issues, from trains clipping into each other, deviating from track in bizarre and unpredictable ways, and other severe issues that show the update, which has taken six months so far, will likely require at minimum another six months to fix, assuming any semblance of competency.

Former team members have spoken out about this and been promptly banned from the server or have also left the server in protest. I have uninstalled the game as i and others have lost faith in its development, especially after this most recent fiasco.

My time there was brief compared to the many other team members who also fought hard for the game to reach the full potential it could have had, but regardless, it pains me to say that your best course of action is to avoid this game entirely. If it is ever completed--a monumental, herculean if--it will not be what people aspired it to be, nor even what it claims to be on Steam.

For a game advertised as a "realistic railroad physics simulation," There is no semblance of realism, physics, or simulation, and if things continue to regress, the railroads may be bound for scrap as well.

RCT Deluxe is one of those rare old gems that, no matter how much people try, has yet to have a spiritual successor fully recapture its essence or innovate in a meaningful way, and the reason for that is in the game's fundamentally brilliant design: it's a concise, well-balanced blend of extreme customization and structural rigidity, two seemingly-conflicting ideals that are perfectly intertwined. Coaster design, park layouts, scenery, and other aspects offer near-infinite variety, but the isometric view and deceptively simple and intuitive grid system offers a very acute precision to coaster refinement that allows a player to master the art of designing and redesigning coasters.

The game's primary focus is on the creation of your very own amusement parks in one of dozens of locations, each with their own distinct goals. To be successful, one must learn how to keep their guests happy by providing them with an assortment of pre-built rides, stalls, and utilities as well as custom roller coasters and other rides that the player must design using a user-friendly ride editing tool. This and other tools offer the player complete control over the ride's track, trains, thematic elements, and price. The player must be considerate of their guests' ride preferences, as every section of track and the overall route will affect three ride statistics: excitement, intensity, and nausea. Learning to design coasters with these stats in mind is a fun and challenging puzzle in itself, and it has a major impact on a park's overall success.

Beyond the fundamentals, after the game eases the player into the basics of park management, each new unlocked park objective teaches a new skill and provides new challenges for the player to test their ability to adapt. The absurd amount of campaigns, contents, rides, scenic options, and other items allows for literally hundreds of hours of fun just to get through all the campaigns at least once, and no two feel alike. Furthermore, while certain methodologies and techniques are sometimes encouraged, the game allows for all sorts of individualistic play styles and different approaches to the same hurdles, so it always feels like strategic and creative problem-solving, not memorization or repetition. Challenges are always present, but they are fair and well-crafted in their structure, so you are always encouraged to improve.

Visually, the game has aged extremely well, and the sprites and assets all look and function beautifully. The game is coded in Assembly, so modding will likely not be an option, but the game's performance is always top-notch. Be sure to check that this version of the game is compatible with your OS before you buy it, but I would highly recommend this game to anyone. It has superb replayability and is always as fresh and exciting as the first time you played it as a little kid. If anything, it's probably more enjoyable today, given the ability to revisit and appreciate the complexity of the game's design with the mental sharpness that comes with adulthood.

Granted, there are occasional small issues with path-finding and staff location assignment as well as the occasional imprecision of the algorithms for calculating ride stats. However, none of these concerns are close to game-breaking, and a bit of extra forethought and experimentation can avoid most if not all of the effects of these, thus the limitations of the game encourage you to work more effectively within those limits. For example, careful planning of main paths, kiosks, queue lines, and facilities can ensure that guests' needs are catered to, and assigning staff locations based on footpath traffic and ride exit access can ensure that rides and paths are always maintained in a timely manner. As of this review, I've clocked over 100 hours into this game, and I absolutely cannot wait for the next 100 hours.

My final rating is 9.8 out of 10. This game was a labor of love, and it really shows.