Train Fever

Train Fever is one of the best train simulators to date and that is saying something. It doesn’t get everything right and the amount of content can be a bit lacking, but the end product is so well made that it deserves plenty of praise.

A well done train-sim that offers quite good and traditional tycoon-gameplay like in Transport-Tycoon, Sid Meiers’ Railroads or Cities in Motion. The playable time period goes from 1850 through 2020 and gives you access to 45 nicely modelled trains and vehicles. The graphics are ok, but not that great for a modern PC game. Vehicles sounds good, but the music-tracks are awful. You can spend very long time in establishing and optimizing your handmade routes and lines, so the game can be satisfying for weeks, especially for its good mod-support.

The passage of time and the subsequent technological evolution forces the player to a meticulous planning of his actions, and the gameplay manages to thrill when your company can make a profit.

Waiting for extra contents and a multiplayer mode, Train Fever looks clearly incomplete. For train lovers, thought, it can be considered an impressive start.

Even with the frustrating technical issues I’ve had with the game, I still find myself wanting to create some more transport lines.

The generated terrain and towns are interesting and present both simple routes and more complex situations to get through and it’s a pleasure to simply watch the trains as they travel through hills and plains in order to move their loads or their passengers...Unfortunately some of the complexity of the game is hard to appreciate because the developers have not offered a clear tutorial or a series of explanations for newcomers, although the community has created some that appear on the official Steam page.

Even though it shows some serious weaknesses this game cost me more hours of my life than I’d like to admit.

Train Fever is a beautiful game that is steeped in transportation history.

Just keep in mind you'll need to go in with plenty of patience and a willingness to search outside the game if something obscure trips you up. If you can get past that, and you like a bit of simulation, you're going to have a lot of fun.

Loosely based on products such as Sid Meier Railroad Tycoon and Transport Tycoon, Train Fever is a deep and complex business game, able to give fun to fans of public transport and its history. A too-heavy graphics engine, the lack of tutorial, unusable menu and the pure sandbox nature ruin part of the value of the work.

Train Fever is a highly ambitious transportation management game that unfortunately suffers from gameplay issues ranging from slow progression to a lack of objectives. Train Fever is only recommended to those who are strong fans of the genre, while other players are better off with more welcoming and polished games.

There is so little variation in gameplay that Train Fever feels shallow and unfinished.

In the end, Train Fever has been designed to serve a very, VERY specific need; people that love to tinker with the infrastructure of public transportation.

I appreciate the effort put into this game, but OpenTTD is free and still unbeaten. [Dec 2014, p.73]

The easier difficulties might be a bit too easy for some but I found hard to be a challenge. Like I said previously, the game does start off a little slow. But if you give it time, you just may catch the fever.

An ambitious sandbox-train-management game that suffers some gameplay issues and a long-term lack of objectives.

Another potentially great game that serves more as a beta version for the price of a finished product. You'll need a powerful PC to run it - and a lot of patience as well. [Issue#245]

It's got some nice potential and it could grow with future expansions, but right now Train Fever is a very thin and convoluted game.

A rail sandbox from the independent developers, that is a follow-up to Transport Tycoon. However, it is bothering the gamers with amateur mistakes, and they are not even pleased with a lack of game content. Nonetheless, it might be a good choice for railway buffs even though a few more months of development would not hurt the game.

A solid and addictive foundation, but for now the game feels a bit too unfinished – a bit like a promising "early access" title.

Train Fever is a true simulation, rich and complex. A feeling of repetitiveness can settle sometimes, but fans of simulation or locomotives will be satisfied without any problems.