Railway Empire
United States, 1830: ‘The New World’ is in its ascendancy. Industry is booming, and the race is on to establish the most dominant and powerful rail empire in all of North America. It’s time to outthink and outmaneuver your competitors as you lead your company into the 20th century! In Railway Empire, you will create an elaborate and wide-ranging rail network, purchase over 40 different trains modelled in extraordinary detail, and buy or build railway stations, maintenance buildings, factories and tourist attractions to keep your travel network ahead of the competition. You’ll also need to hire and manage your workforce if you want to ensure an efficient train service, whilst also develop over 300 technologies ranging from mechanical improvements to the trains themselves to workplace infrastructures and advanced amenities as you progress through five eras of technological innovations.
Game Discussion
Steam User 10
For a genre and industry obsessed with time, can anyone explain why it takes 30 in game days to travel from Cheyenne to Rock springs on a straight line with no stops?
Locking the game behind a long tutorial scenario in which the game does not tell you vital game mechanics is bad. Not letting you move on to other scenarios until you beat it is worse. Failing to tell you there is a time limit to the scenario is wrong.
Voiced characters are loud and obnoxious too. Game does a lot to keep you from wanting to try again or play at all
Steam User 5
Either Railway Empire games (1 or 2) are the best railroad tycoon games out there. I love the relief lines helping setting tracks with minimum grade.
It's not always easy to start playing railroad games: you either get overwhelmed with the endless tutorial or are left for dead and can't figure out where to start or what to do. The devs found a good balance between both options. Optional tutorials along the way make the learning curve smoother.
If you find RE1 on sale, it's a good start. You even have more scenarios in RE1 comparing to RE2, like South America, Africa, Australia, Japan. The European and USA maps are not as detailed as RE2, but you still can have a lot of fun. The ride along cameras are the highlight of the game, although highly improved in RE2.
Steam User 6
Like model trains, but slightly less time consuming, and a lot less expensive.
Steam User 3
Since Sid Meier's Railroad Tycoon, been wanting to play some games with such management style, grow the cities, grow the cash, buy-out competitions with just enough details to deal with. :)
Steam User 3
Railway Empire gives a lot of fun and is completely addictive. For me the only flaw is during a long-play: when you amass wealth, creating new routes becomes very repetitive and boring.
Steam User 4
Great game. Doesn't hold your hand, which may make it frustrating until you learn how to build rails.
DLCs are overpriced.
Steam User 3
Do you like trains? How about slow strategy games about trains? No? Then skip this. If you do like slow strategy games (or trains) then this is not bad. Sequel is better but it kept me engaged enough. Boat loads of DLC all offer more of the same in reality. One massive annoyance; the competitors voice. Constance and unending taunts in the stunningly irritatingly voices. Multiples times I begged them to shut up and quickly turned the volume down on them. I played this on Steam Deck but hooked up to mouse and keyboard. Runs game totally fine but i don't think this is one for playing on the go. Shame, there'd be a fun irony to playing with trains on a train!
Kid friendly? - Y
NSFW? - N
Gore? - N
Microtransactions? - N
--Steam deck compatibility--
*Perfect/Nearly perfect out the box-X (On Mouse and Keyboard)
*Perfect after some tweaks-
*Runs fine without tweaks-
*Runs fine after playing with settings-
*Just about Playable, even after playing with settings-
*Borderline unplayable; even on lowest and/or heavily modded settings-
*This game cannot be played on Steam Deck-
--{ Graphics }---
*Visual Masterpiece-
*Beautiful-
*Good-
*Unremarkable but fine-X
*Noticeably bad-
*Either revoltingly ugly or a glitchy mess-
---{ Gameplay }---
*Sleep? Nah play this instead-
*Just a really great game to play-
*A fun experience-
*Some bad bits but fun overall-
*Bang average-x
*Good bits but lots of bad bits-
*Rubbish gameplay, unfun or a dull experience -
*This game so bad I made a voodoo doll of it-
---{ Audio }---
*They should win a Grammy for this-
*Very good to listen to-
*Good-
*Meh-x
*Bad and annoying-
*Play on mute-
---{ Storage Size }---
*Floppy Disk-
*Negligible-
*Notable but fine -X
*Problematic-
*Delete everything then install-
*Did i download the whole internet-
---{ Difficulty }---
*Just press "X"-
*Easy-
*Some challenge in places -
*Starting to get tricky-x
*Difficult-
*You will rage quit at how hard this is-
---{ Grind }---
*Zero grinding-
*A little grind outside of main story-
*A little grind overall-x
*Average grind level -
*A little tedious at times-
*Play with tv on to distract from grind-
*This game is a chore-
---{ Game Story }---
*Worse than Game of Thrones finale-
*No Story-x
*Some lore-
*A beginning middle and end-
*A good/fun story-
*Would make a good tv show-
*Oscar winner-
---{ Game Time }---
*Hour or two tops-
*Short-
*Average-x
*Long-
*A epic saga-
*It never ends...-
---{ Bugs }---
*I encountered zero bugs-x
*Minor bugs, easily swatted-
*Some irritating bugs -
*Bugs becoming a problem-
*Borderline unplayable-
*This game is broken-
---{ ? / 10 }--- (A 10/10 game is a genre-defining game which will stand the test of time. A 5/10 is a perfectly serviceable and okay game, not bad but unremarkable. A 1/10 truly is awful and should cost people their job.)
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5 - x
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10 [Genre defining GOAT game-