Sid Meier's Railroads! App Reviews

Fun game, updated from the original 90s classic. Only wish there was better game center support, such as achievements and a leaderboard.

This game is not a game for children. The tracks are hard to build and you do not have access to all the trains. The app says you have 40 trains but you actually only have 3 (all steam engines) until you earn enough money within the game to buy additional years. Not for children, if you are looking for a great train game for kids try Trainz Simulator.

Ive been playing it 4 or 5 hours a day for the last 5 days, and it hasnt crashed yet. This is interesting, tho I keep wanting more control over the smaller details. The AI that routes trains is really dumb. It doesnt look ahead at the whole track to check for oncoming trains. It only routes trains around each other if they actually meet at a switch. If you have switches with a long track length between them, you can count on trains ending up head-to-head quite often even if there is a parallel track one of them could have taken instead. After a minute or two, the AI will just let them pass thru each other, but it is still quite a bit of lost time and thus money. For a while I thought it was even more broken than it is, until I noticed that depots LOOK like they can handle 4 parallel tracks at once but can only handle 2 at a time. Stations can handle 3, and terminals 4 tracks at once. Other Sid Meier games give you so much more control over smaller details, Civ being the classic example. I was looking forward to designing routing/switching patterns to keep things flowing, for example. I also wanted to be able to load up a full train with cargo and drop one car at each stop, but it doesnt work like that. Everything is unloaded and completely reloaded at each stop. Your only tool in making trains/cargo/passengers go where they want is to put them on separate tracks. And industries that feed each other do not do so if they are in the same city.

im a big fan of simulation games and this one is fine one at that however its almost unplayable in complicated scenarios, trains will get lost and never reach their destinations, terrain problems etc, I just wish theyd fix that otherwise its a great game.

If you have never played before make sure you take the time to do the tutorial then go to train table mode to learn how to lay routes. Takes me back to being a kid and playing railroad tycoon! You can make it challenging by increasing AI players and investor levels!

I admit, Im a a sucker. A complete sucker. I bought this game on PC. It was amusing when I first bought it. It was graphically relavant 6 years ago. It locked up, crashed, BSODd my PC at random, numerous times, without so much as a hint of fatal error. I wrote the devs with probably 2 dozen emails, including log files, crash reports, etc. in hopes theyd fix the errors. I wasnt alone…and I wasnt unique. Fast forward to Jan 13. I bought the ported version for my rmbp, thinking, "surely after 6yrs, and a new software distributor, theyd at least have fixed the bugs that made me incredibly bitter at my purchase 6 years ago." $29.99 wasted. I should have learned my lesson. Im now into my 14th email of log files, crash reports, etc., and countless unreported crashes, and not one word or hint back from the developers as to any form of fixes scheduled. Dont waste your time and become a sucker, unless you enjoy donating $29.99 to a for-profit.

This game is addictive and really good. What I would like to see are new engines and new routes. There is so much potential in this game that it can be made even better.

If your expectation is a light, but challenging strategy game that involves establishing train routes, then this game succeeds. AI is a challenge and there is some micro-management but not overwhelming so it’s still fun. The map will get to be a mess near the end due to the many routes instead of being able to connect to a competitor track. It’s generally fun tho. If your expectation is a game that you expect to work after double checking the specs on your computer wtih the specs required to run this game, this game fails. Expect many crashes to your desktop. It does have a frequent autosave feature tho.

Later in the game, once you have many trains (and many tracks), certain locomotives tend to stop for no reason, float off the tracks, and reverse direction. The game could certainly use a patch. Some of the logic that trains use to choose tracks could use a bit more work. Otherwise its a very fun and addictive game!

The title says it all. Game stalls and doesnt work properly. Great game but has serious issues...

I have had the game for 3 weeks and playing 3-4 hours a couple of nights a week. The game hasnt crashed yet. I read the reviews and was nervous to purchase but dont have any regrets except lack of sleep. If you like trains builders this game is easy to learn with hours of fun.

I had hoped that this would be a worthy successor to the Railroad Tycoon (for Mac) game I used to play, but it has turned out to be a disappointment, at least in my situation. Things went fine for me until I entered the window for buying a train and setting up a route for it. I was not able to get the “OK” button in the lower right-hand corner of the window, confirming the train route, to work. So it was a very short game for me. Feral support did respond quickly to my inquiry, but had obviously not read my communication, since I received an answer explaining that they were aware that laying track could be buggy (so, watch out for that, too). I got no feedback about the problem with buying trains and getting back out of the route setup window, which was what I asked. Based on my personal experience, I would avoid purchasing this game.

I was looking for a replacement for Railroad Tycoon III. This isn’t it. This feels like a rush-job or cash-grab; not a carefully crafted strategy game. (Specific example: how trains route themselves over the rails) So I figured out how to get the Steam version of Railroad Tycoon III working in wine (via PlayOnMac) and that’s what I’m playing now.

Runs on my 2010 MacBook Air just fine but the game has some issues. The first one was, during the tutorial, I got locked in the train window and couldn’t exit. Then I noticed trains getting stuck on the track. Looks like you have to create multiple tracks and there’s no warning if you have more then one train on a track at a time. I just quickly lost interest and I’m now looking for another train game. Two stars for the lack of an update to fix issues. I don’t want to get too envolved in this game and possibly come across more issues.

Needs more trains, like more passenger type trains and diesels that are similar to the gp series, other than that, great game.

When you all gonna update this game? please hurry i want newer trains lol

I had to drop it one star - its still a great and very fun game, but it crashes - Alot. usually it just starts rendering graphics wrong and making it hard to see (ie tracks will vanish, but trains still run ok) but its also hard crashed where the game just exits. Lastly, no updates is kinda frustrating - not that wed expect a bunch, but a few more bug fixes would have been great. Original review: OK, I cant say if this was or wasnt here before, but playing it today - I noticed a north pole level! I was surprised at how much fun this turned out to be - Ive just wasted my whole morning! It crashed once on me, but not too bad given how long Id played it for. Ive noticed it seems to auto save often so it shouldnt be that bad. Plays great on my 15" Macbook pro hooked to a 27" Screen at 2560x1440. Once nice touch with this game is it lets you choose which screen to display on (you can also display in a window) I also have Civilization and on that it full screens on the main monitor only. Learning curve wise, It did take me about 20 minutes to really get into it. Once you do, I think there are enough missions/objectives to make this a lasting game that youll get your moneys worth on. Compared to Civilization - this is a different style game - Civ works on a turn by turn system, this is realtime. and of course the objectives are different. Compared to Trainz - Sid Meiers Railroads is a reasonably polished game that is fun to play, Trainz is a simulator, and really fills a different purpose.

I like this game because I use it to relax from work. I wish more maps that worked were available. I probably play too much because I am always looking for new maps and they never seem to work.

i loved the 3rd railroad tycoon and this one is not any better. i wish i could still play the old one but it is outdatedand dose not run on my computer. :( I think that this game is cheesy and boring there is not much to do and not really any where to go and make your railroad. citys are small and so are the maps. I am disappointed with this game. i thought it would be fun.

Don’t get this if you’re running Capitan, screen handling goes south quickly. It’s a great game though. Sadly, Feral Interactive does not seem interested in supporting or continuing its development