Railway Islands – Puzzle Review

Whereas action-packed shooters and sports activities sims actually get the adrenaline pumping, it’s often good to only quiet down with a extra enjoyable sport. Possibly one thing like Railway Islands – Puzzle, which desires to create a chilled-out vibe for its railway connecting antics.

Will this comparatively low cost and minimalistic puzzler ship a satisfying expertise, or is Railway Islands – Puzzle a journey not value boarding?

In Railway Islands – Puzzle, you’re basically enjoying the function of a railway line supervisor answerable for guaranteeing trains attain their locations on a gaggle of islands. You’re going to have an actual job in your palms because the railway tracks in place are all combined up and so there’s no route to attach the crimson entry tunnel to the blue exit tunnel. There are fifty islands, which interprets to fifty ranges, and you will need to create protected passage for the practice to ship sources to the residents, earlier than exiting the extent.

Every bit of the observe is represented by a hexagonal tile, which may be swapped with different tiles on the island. These can be rotated to align the sections up accordingly, so as to full a full circuit; any breakages will see the practice come to a halt and the extent restarts. The idea itself can’t be knocked and I like the truth that it really works virtually like a jigsaw puzzle and Pipe Mania type hybrid, however the controls are a nightmare and trigger annoyance from the off.

You’re introduced with a cursor that’s used for highlighting tiles you want to both rotate or choose to swap. The primary downside is the accuracy of it, often not registering the actual fact you’re hovering over a specific tile. After which there are occasions the place the motion carried out simply fails to occur, affecting acts of rotation and swapping. The weirdest concern nonetheless, sees the cursor hit quite a few invisible partitions while navigating islands. All of that mixed is an actual nuisance.

Regarding the puzzling, it’s nice how Railway Islands builds the idea alongside the best way. Initially, the issue is somewhat variety because the variety of tiles is low, with solely straight and curved items of observe to fret about, which makes options pretty apparent. Swiftly although, new forms of tiles are launched like a criss-cross piece, one which splits the observe into two or three routes, and even elevated observe to achieve the upper components of an island. Heck, it additionally provides splitting observe tiles which have a set variety of utilization earlier than the road truly switches. 

There’s rather a lot to think about, however anybody conversant in jigsaws will know that the sides are sometimes the perfect locations to start and it’s comparable right here. Then it’s important to make sure the observe passes by sure stops to drop off sources, comparable to bananas, metal, meat, cash, and extra. It actually forces you to image the potential routes in your thoughts after which it’s a case of placing your creativeness into apply. The splitting observe items are sometimes the trickiest to work into the circuit, however a little bit of trial and error with them doesn’t do any hurt as restarts are fast.

Upon finishing the degrees during which the extra specialist tiles are prevalent, you undoubtedly get the eureka moments. These put on off as you strategy the latter levels sadly, however solely because of an absence of contemporary concepts past – roughly – the midway level. When you’ve seen each sort of tile and the fascinating looping circuits they turn into part of, Railway Islands – Puzzle does really feel samey. The change of the surroundings from summer season to autumn and winter is good, that includes vibrant colors, however when spring arrives, it’s too harking back to summer season – giving off extra acquainted emotions.

To be honest although, you can have Railway Islands – Puzzle all wrapped up in 4 to 6 hours, so the shortage of freshness received’t be an issue for lengthy. After ending the fifty ranges, there’s one other choice to lengthen the expertise within the type of the Workshop. Principally, it’s an outlet to create your individual puzzling island circuits to share with the world and take a look at their fixing abilities, or to easily check out the puzzles made by different gamers. As a result of controls being a ache, the entire creation suite is extra of a chore, however nonetheless, it’s an honest additional to have in place.

Railway Islands – Puzzle goes full steam forward with delivering nice circuit based mostly puzzles, however points preserve slamming on the brakes. The enjoyable ambiance conjured up by the artwork type and melancholic BGM is totally offset by the often unresponsive and irritating controls. And that’s a disgrace as a result of the puzzles are effectively put collectively, with the intelligent circuit designs posing sufficient of a problem to interact your mind, with out coming throughout as too troublesome. 

The tremendous low cost price ticket and intriguing puzzles would possibly simply tilt the stability in favour of a Railway Islands – Puzzle buy. Simply bear in mind that this one is at all times on the verge of going off the rails.

Railway Islands – Puzzle is available for purchase from the Xbox Retailer