Locomoto Review (PC)

Green Tile Digital might just have something here: a traditional life simulation game set aboard a rolling locomotive with a roster of eccentric farmyard critters filling out the carriages, harmonic lo-fi beats echoing in tandem with a pulsating world of vibrant colors, and a surprisingly dense customization suite with more than enough thematic decor to make an otherwise dull railroad feel like a home away from home. Eat your heart out, Animal Crossing — Locomoto is in town, and it’s pulling out all of the stops to transform the humble roots of a familiar life and farming simulation game into a cascading adventure for sandbox lovers and fledgling conductors alike. And the best part is, you don’t need to pay a mortgage to be able to power a locomotive. For shame, Tom Nook. For shame.

At its core, Locomoto is a family-friendly life and travel simulation game—a game that, familiar tidbits forgiving, centers its gameplay around operating a locomotive, filling it with homely decorations and other intricate fixtures, befriending the locals who rely on the rail network to reach their destination, and potting between various towns and areas of interest to collect resources, fulfill quests, and provide a useful service for those in need of assistance. There are all sorts of cosmetics to unlock, upgrades to install, and even a hearty batch of side activities to participate in. So, your typical life and farming simulation game — with trains.

If you’re willing to punch your ticket and stick with us for a short while, then allow us to take you down the track that is Green Tile Digital’s cutesy locomotive-based sim. All aboard? Then let’s cue the whistle.

All Aboard

The basic setup for Locomoto isn’t all that different from what you might’ve seen in other life and farming-type iterations. It’s so on the nose, in fact, that one might argue that it’s of a similar ilk as, well, most farming-sandbox sims that have come to fruition in the last, I don’t know, thirty years. But, there’s a notable difference here: the fact that it removes the generic barren allotment from the equation and, with a bit of steam to power its engines, opts to substitute farmyards with a customizable locomotive. The rest of the open-world elements are still there, like collecting raw materials, discovering blueprints, and completing requests in exchange for clothes, resources, and other nifty perks that help your business to thrive.

As any reasonably priced train operator would do, you have the opportunity to transport passengers from one blimp on the world map to another, after which you have the chance to disembark the locomotive to explore the surrounding areas, fetch intel and other ingredients for your active blueprints, and listen to the stories of those who traveled the road before you. Once a lot of this exploration malarkey is done, you then have the option to add more wagons to your fleet—a perk that grants you access to more passengers—as well as decorate the carriages with additional booths, tables, and various decorative items of a certain theme. And that’s about it as far as the general progression goes; you collect, you upgrade, and you gradually expand your fleet, all whilst pitching in on various countryside expeditions. Simple enough, right? Right.

Non-Stop Locomotion

As with most crafting-centric sims, customization is everything here. Aside from having the opportunity to mold your own conductor, you also have the ability to paint your wagons, alter furniture patterns, and insert your own machines into each train. Granted, this creation process takes up the lion’s share of the journey—so much of it, in fact, that you will spend more time applying for upgrades and tweaking your existing blueprints than anything else in the game. But that isn’t the only thing you do here. In addition to your general managerial responsibilities, you also need to speak with guests, serve drinks and snacks, and go above and beyond to fulfill their needs before each journey meets its destination.

Locomoto is an incredibly easy game to pick up and roll with—to the point where you don’t necessarily need any existing knowledge of how the world works, much less how it progresses forward. There is a lot of scavenging and routine-like work to be done, which can be a little daunting at times, I’ll admit. But with a generous amount of characters to find and underlying stories to discover, there is some depth to the journey. In a nutshell, though, what you see is what you get: a star-crossed hybrid of wholesome life simulation and simple yet satisfying gameplay hooks with the added bonus of a casket of vibrant environments and lovable farmyard characters. It’s a cute game, and so, while it isn’t exactly an original work of art, it is a compelling one, and definitely something that ought to appeal to the fellow Animal Crossing fans out there.

Verdict

I’m not going to put Locomoto on the same pedestal as Animal Crossing, because that wouldn’t be giving it the respect that it deserves. But, somewhere in that rotating sphere, both of these properties do exist in tandem with each other’s respective systems. Perhaps it’s the wholesome art style, the bug-eyed nature of the locale, or the handful of fetch quests and sandbox-centric milestones, that gives it the familiar look of an existing IP. I’m not sure what it is, but I can’t be the only person who sees the resemblance between the two worlds. I’m not complaining, though. If anything, it makes the search for the best possible audience a lot easier.

While it’s no secret that cutesy life simulation games are more commonplace than a spoon in a cutlery box, they are often revered as the most popular vessels in modern gaming culture. To that end, I don’t think there is much need to explain why you should give Locomoto the steam it needs to maneuver, as it more or less idles in the same award-winning gene pool as so, so many other wholesome relics.

To put it simply, if you adore serene environments, liminal art, relaxing fetch quests, and beginner-friendly activities like decorating, farming, and befriending passengers and other eccentric townsfolk, then you might as well climb aboard this passion-powered train set to punch your ticket and scratch a couple of itches.