A Bumpy Ride Review (PC)

I’m chugging along the railroad aboard a superfluous locomotive of vibrant freight cars and passengers, battling both the corkscrews of the Frontier and the turbulent weather conditions from a ravenous storm. On the one hand, I have a quota to fill. On the other hand, I have a request that wants me to tread out of my comfort zone to explore vast distances across the boroughs of the Wild West. The locomotive probably won’t make it to the next platform. And yet, I have this odd feeling that the journey will be worth the trouble. An upgrade lingers on the horizon, and if I can just reach the next station without colliding with another freight train, I should be able to acquire it.

A Bumpy Ride isn’t like Choo Choo Charles, and I’m over the moon about that. With no arachnid trains to obliterate with a peppering of bullet casings, the goal here is a little easier to accomplish. It’s just the Wild West, a small locomotive, and a nineteenth century diorama that hosts a plethora of guests and courier jobs for me to gradually sift through at a snail-like speed. The idea is simple: deliver freight across the Frontier, and make small upgrades to the train as and when the time permits. A new paint job; a special car for the first class passengers; a sturdier shell for countering deadly projectiles, and so on and so forth.

To state the obvious, A Bumpy Ride isn’t without its turbulence. As the overseer of the railroad, you—the conductor with the power to manipulate the tracks—have the role of delivering cargo, fulfilling ticket stubs, and onboarding requests that allow you to edge just a little deeper into the Wild West. The catch, however, is that no ride is ever as smooth as you want it to be. A shift in the weather might cause your locomotive to rock back and forth, or another train might just bolt out of the blue and force you to make split-second alterations to your route to ensure that the freight meets its destination.

To counter its turbulent nature, A Bumpy Ride does come clean with some joyfully boisterous mechanics that are both a delight and an absolute joy to roll with. In no way is A Bumpy Ride a painfully difficult game; on the contrary, it’s a happy little accident that just feels good to ride. The warm animated atmosphere; the silly locomotive physics; and the neat touches that illuminate the essences of old-school arcade games, for example. Suffice it to say, it’s a bashful experience that, while still a little short and without the extensive platforms of a globe-spanning excursion, feels awfully easy to navigate and enjoy for the short time it sticks around on the tracks.

If you’re familiar with Spirit Tracks, then A Bumpy Ride ought to feel like a classic trip down memory lane. Similar in design, the game mostly involves navigating the tracks, transporting cargo and needy passengers, and tackling environmental obstacles that either obstruct the flow of the journey or prevent you from reaching your destination. In this world, though, you don’t use a stylus to weave your way and plot your routes; you take advantage of the locomotive’s distinct features to quell issues and progress deeper into the story. As you earn your stars, you unlock upgrades, and with that, more opportunities to transport greater freight and additional passengers. The world expands, and clouded regions on the map transform into fresh blips for you to traverse. Simple, yet effective.

As I mentioned earlier, A Bumpy Ride is a pretty short game. At just sixty or seventy minutes in length, you can explore just about every nook and cranny of its tracks in a single sitting. Don’t let this fool you into thinking that it’s a game without weight, though. Due to its upgrade system and customization options, the game does offer a solid variety of things to do outside of the general freight trafficking process. Of course, there could be a lot more, but for what it does provide in its pocket-sized livery, it definitely delivers a neat and well-rounded package that feels complete. It’s short, but that doesn’t mean it’s without a heart and a good hook to keep you on the railroad.

All in all it feels as if there’s an easy recommendation here. Visually, A Bumpy Ride hits the nail on the head as a tribute to old-school animation and arcade cult favorites. Mechanically, it’s an easy game to slip into and learn on the fly, with little to no learning curves and a UI that’s both intuitive and helpful. It might not reinvent the wheel with its mechanics or its design, but it does add its own slither of elbow grease to the framework to create a functioning vessel that’s both simple to navigate and surprisingly easy to master. Maybe that’s all that it truly needs to work.

Verdict

A Bumpy Ride veers onto a familiar stomping ground in an effort to combine the mechanics of Spirit Tracks and the visual elements of Cel Damage to create a short yet oddly entertaining railroad romper that can easily scratch an itch for both locomotive enthusiasts and freight-fumbling fiends alike. It’s still a short game that would certainly benefit from a little extra freight—requests, biomes, and upgrades, for example—but to give credit where it is due, it does provide a great experience for those interested in locomotive-based gameplay and cartoon-like behavioral traits à la Looney Tunes.

To cut a long story short, A Bumpy Ride feels like a simple but satisfying journey with a good sense of what makes a short railroad adventure enjoyable. It might not be the greatest indie railway sim on the block, but I can definitely bring myself to vouch for it. Or at least, I can think of numerous reasons to praise its minimal yet time-appropriate aesthetic and its oddly bashful mechanics. Maybe it isn’t perfect. But then, it doesn’t have to be, either. Personally, I’m all for taking the ride — even with the bumps.