Trackline Express Review (PC)

It’s dark out, and the sky is about as charcoal smitten as a slate of arrows volleying down upon its chosen targets—passengers, of all people, who are currently under the impression that a ticket to ride the ever-famous Trackline Express will grant them safe passage through the canyons of a dystopian world. I don’t have it in me to tell them otherwise, but deep down, I know that it’ll soon become too much to hide. The tribes are rallying forth just over yonder, and we haven’t enough coal in the engine to keep us trucking toward the next station. It pains me to admit it, truly, but I doubt we’ll see the other side of the tracks; death is inevitable, as is the barrage of compensation claims to the figureheads of the corporation. It won’t be long now, folks.

I wont lie to you, Trackline Express had me at the first sound of its buckling locomotive rolling up to the platform. Its art style didn’t captivate me, I’ll admit; it struck me as being a little too cartoonish, if that makes sense. In any other world, it might’ve made sense, but in this world—a domain in which arrows could pierce the skin of a train conductor and wildfires could cause mass destruction—it felt out of place. But then, perhaps that was just me; Choo-Choo Charles did something to me, man, and weirdly enough, I haven’t been able to look at trains in the same wholehearted way since — hence the confusion about the cutesy and, let’s face it, seemingly harmless locomotive in Trackline Express. But fine, you know — whatever.

To cut to the chase, Trackline Express has, after several years of having its nuts and bolts tightened, released on PC. Let’s talk about it.

All Aboard

So, what is Trackline Express, if not a love letter to the acclaimed cult horror Choo-Choo Charles? Well, first and foremost, it isn’t a horror game, but rather, a hybrid between tower defense and train management—two staple genres that just so happen to complement each other’s strengths surprisingly well, all things considered. The game, which can be played either alone or with another fledgling conductor, is all about the process of traveling from one station to the next whilst simultaneously being bombarded with arrows, spears, wildfire smoke, and, well, anything else that can pierce the carbon shell of a locomotive traveling at ludicrously high speeds.

If you haven’t been able to put two and two together just yet, then, to be quite frank, you don’t need to fret about that much. Again, being something of a tower defense-like game, the ultimate goal is to ensure that your passengers arrive at their final destinations — even if, say, it means having to sacrifice a few of the last-remaining lumps of coal and whatever leftover ammunition you find in your overhead luggage. Whichever route you choose, the endgame pretty much remains one and the same: you build a bulletproof locomotive, and hurl it through the ringer en route to some destination of a questionable origin. It sounds relatively straightforward and somewhat painless on paper, for sure — but honestly, it isn’t, and if there’s anything I’ve learned since picking it up, it’s that I hate cartoon trains more than I hate Choo-Choo Charles. Just trains, in general, I guess.

Please, Mind the Gat

Trackline Express is broken up into several sections, with each one containing a series of two-dimensional maps that generate all sorts of obstacles for you to overcome—missing track pieces, wildfires, and hostile tribes, to list just a few. As the overseer in this fairly conflicting world, you must onboard passengers, and essentially equip them with the tools and weapons needed to make short work of the obstacles that stand between themselves and the final destination. Easier said than done, of course, what with the vast majority of the local residents having an issue with anything that dares disturb their slumber.

To start out, you idle in possession of a few bits of coal, though nowhere near enough to get you to your location in the faraway hills. To tackle this rather dire situation, you must venture out into the wild and secure natural resources, with which you can then use to create valuable tools and upgrades for your train that’s at a standstill up on the tracks. Of course, in an ideal world, you’d have plenty of time to catch a few rays and scratch off the objectives on your checklist. But, sadly, that isn’t the case here; the locomotive must keep moving forward, even if it means traveling directly towards some form of enemy stronghold or remote troupe. Suffice it to say that, these tasks aren’t easy — especially when you’re also in charge of the passengers’ safety, too.

The good news is, you don’t need to give your passengers the special privileges that tie in with a first-class carriage; in fact, you can make each of them work, even if it means allocating a weapon to a pacifist who’d soon rather cower behind the water tank than unleash lead. Did I mention that these are paying customers?

A “Pleasant” Onward Journey

Granted, this isn’t the easiest game to wrap your head around — especially if you’re relatively new to the survival and world-building genres. Aside from it having a slew of tools and resources to craft, it also invites you to forge buildings, coal reserves, and water storage systems, too. For these reasons alone, you might struggle to understand how a lot of the process works, or at least, what it takes to make short work of several of the primary objectives. With that said, as the game does also offer a daily challenge to sift through—a standalone experience that comes loaded with its own rewards and win conditions—it doesn’t take a huge amount of time to familiarize yourself with the game’s mechanics or design.

Gameplay aside, Trackline Express does also provide a pretty harmonious soundtrack that’s thematically pleasing and on point, and not to mention an art style that, while inexcusably lacking in depth, is easy on the eyes and bursting with color. Needless to say that, as far as independent games travel, Trackline Express does give a lot of its top-tier adversaries a good run for their money. Again, it isn’t a perfect game, but it is one that has the power to steal a pocketful of hours, and perhaps even more, provided that you’re able to employ another player to the table.

Thankfully, Trackline Express also flows surprisingly well, too. I’ll admit, I did begin to question the structural integrity of the system every once in awhile — more so during moments that involved having to hack through endless waves of clutter and arrows and what have you. But, to my honest surprise, it never ground to a halt, nor did it cough up any technical difficulties or low frame rates, either. To that end, I couldn’t complain.

Verdict

Trackline Express provides just enough of a good time to warrant a single ticket to ride, perhaps even a return trip, provided that you enjoy the sheer carnage of a burning locomotive romping through a desert. It isn’t the most graphically impressive game on the market, but where it lacks in striking visuals, it most certainly makes up for in countless other ways — its weirdly addictive tower defense-like gameplay and engaging progression system, to round off two of the most refined features of the bunch. It’s a good single-player game, too — which came as a slight surprise for me, as I was expecting the pandemonium of the situation to be far better suited for a collaborative approach than a solo one. But I was wrong, apparently; it had a lot to offer even the biggest loners, which made the overall experience thrice as appealing, for sure.

Say, if you are on the market for a hearty survival and rogue-like adventure, then there’s a good chance that you’ll enjoy a good amount of the contents that flesh out the great Trackline Express. Moreover, if you’re on the hunt for a good old-fashioned co-op game that’ll really get those internal cogs of yours turning, then again, you’re bound to find something to collaborate on in one of the core modes or, failing that, the daily challenges. But, if none of these things tickle your fancy, then hey — I hear Choo-Choo Charles is over on the adjacent platform.