Railway Islands - Puzzle

railway islands, not unlike the developer's puzzle car, is about making sure the train can pass by all the stations and leave through a tunnel. this one operates with hexagons, a far superior shape compared to measly squares, but it's the same general idea: swap and rotate pieces until it's all ship-shape. well, train-shape... no timer or timing to avoid accidents, but since puzzle car got fixed up eventually, I expected more polish from this right from the start, but it took a while once again.

50 levels in 4 environments, unlocked one by one. stations, tunnels and the scenery are fixed, only track pieces can be interacted with. the train only leaves when you click a button, but even if it crashes, level reset leaves pieces as they were, no need to start over. solved levels remain solved for later as well.

not many mechanics to speak of, but besides some elevated terrain, crossing tracks play a major part. arrows indicate the direction the train will take the first time it passes over them, then they switch to the other track for next time (and possibly another if it's a 3-way thing). stop/go signs with numbers indicate how many passes are needed for the switch to happen.

controls are mouse-based, but the keyboard also works for bringing up the menu, restarting a level, starting the train or zooming in and out, which was patched in after release as a must-have feature to properly see some of the levels. left click swaps tiles, mouse wheel rotates what's under the cursor. holding it moves the camera around, right click rotates it, but restarting a level resets the camera too. 2x speed was another post-release addition, also necessary because the train takes a while to do its thing on some levels.

lovely model railway aesthetics with planes flying around, ships on the water, pretty cool. nice music, separate volume settings, resolutions, windowed mode, shadow and v-sync toggles and languages, but only volumes are available while playing. there's a level select screen, also only through the main menu's play button, and level numbers aren't visible anywhere else.

it's all very relaxing, a bit tricky at times with all the loops, so if you're in a conducting mood, choo-choose this. an update even added a level editor with workshop support to provide longevity.

I wish I could give this game a "meh" rating. It's fun at first, and interesting enough. But halfway through the levels, the user is burdened with a tedious "challenge" of predictive counting -- where will this junction arrow be when the train makes its third pass through the second loop? Who cares!?

The best puzzle games provide players with interesting variations on a theme, slowly introducing new wrinkles into the puzzles. Instead, this game -- like many others -- just adds meaningless complexity and scenery changes. Once I stop having fun, I stop playing puzzle games. (Just like I don't bother punishing my brain with the most difficult sudoku puzzles.)

I got my money's worth, but there are better puzzle games out there. Only buy this if you run out of other options.

Fun game play with good variety. I'm a bit of an idiot so once I hit the 30s+ I'd attempt the level for 15 -30 minutes depending on whether I felt I was making any progress then I check a guide to complete. Great if you're into puzzle games, and certainly worth the $2.