Golden Rails: Small Town Story + Collector's Edition

A fine well made TM game for the genre fans. 50 basic levels and 10 additional levels already included as the ‘Collector's Edition’.

It’s common to say in reviews how one wanted to like a game, well, quite frankly, i have to say i didn't want to like this game (mainly because of how it handles the active pause cheat), still it won me and i liked it (mainly because of satisfying level design and gold time fitting with my actual results).

As for the active pause cheat it's the thing i'm used to use in TM games since the times when Build-a-lot was new. I play in windowed mode and whenever i want to take a few moments to look at my level and think i click away from the game's window and it instantly gets paused. Once i'm ready i click on the next task i want done and the game continues. Good TM games flawlessly continue from this point and even allow this click that unpauses the game to be registered. This game is ‘bad’ in these terms because although it allows to look at the game field while paused, it still calls up its menu instead of just unpausing when being activated again, and even does that with a delay.

The need to nervously hover over resources extracted by workers would be another reason not to like the game but at least they don't disappear if not picked up (like in some other games where this annoyance is present), they add to stockpile automatically after a while and hovering just speeds it up. Thus no real nervosity here, regrettable but bearable.

And there are good sides. First of all choo choo it has steam trains lol. Levels’ gold times seem well tested and provide just enough approximately equal challenge for my liking (being a sucker at both thinky and clicky games but at clicky a bit more, i had to replay most of the levels for the second time, after realizing which resource to focus on where, and rarely more than that while never hitting a wall, and the bonuses thing has played its unnecessary part here). I only played on the hardest mode available and didn't bother to check the others (can't say anything about the level guides for the same reason). Probably that means that for some players the game would be boringly easy, these games are (i hope) never played for the story.

There are bonuses that make beating levels slightly easier. They gradually become available as the story advances, so that the first time some level 5 is played it has less bonuses accessible than when replayed after having finished levels 40+. Although i don't like this approach to forcing a player to spend more time in the game replaying levels after the ‘upgrades’ have made them easier, i saved my effort and replayed most levels for 3 stars only after getting access to most of the boni. (Not the last one with the hourglass, the one before it is better anyway.) Maybe this is still a cleaner move than unlocking the ‘real game’ only after beating the last level in ‘surprise, this was just a sandbox mode’ as Royal Envoy does — at least gives the player some choice.

Yeah among titles from which this one steals ideas from, and from what i know, copying from Royal Envoy seems a bit rude (gardens? wait for the water towers and see), but copying from Roads of Rome is light enough.

Bad sides are too many tasks require two workers, no undoing queued tasks, no queueing tasks that are ‘right behing’ those already queued — best games of this kind either allow that or even have both ‘multitasking’ and ‘no multitasking allowed’ modes. All of that are just rules, while they are slightly regrettable they don't spoil the gameplay and are not bad enough for me to start thinking dirty about the devs. Also it has these things most TM games seem to have but none can explain what a hell for (one hidden object on each level, not actually hidden, and the shooting minigames; you know how a TM player always worries, hey, i'm here to play my favourite genre i want to try hard for, why are the devs forcing me to also try in a genre i would never have chosen myself and what if i never manage to get the 3 star on these alien levels and that will be my fly in the ointment? Well these were unnecessary but not too spoiling for an arcade sucker or HOG hater like me.)

At most levels there's no need to think whether to upgrade a building or not, it's always a good idea to upgrade everything because in the end every resource will be used or traded for another. As for me, the latter fact means a good level design. But maybe making the ‘hard’ mode's gold times actually hard and optimal would have changed all this.

There are minor bugs: like right after opening a trader's menu it closes by itself because something just happened in the game or for no reason at all. Didn't affect anything though, but could if there were stricter time limits. Maybe not a bug but on levels with steam ships the ship noises seemed to come randomly and probably meant nothing instead of informing the player where the ship is. In some cases the game does not call the nearest available worker for the task (and this one's hard to notice to get mad about it). Music is cheery but one of those you stop noticing around 10 seconds into it (which i guess is exactly what it should be).

I can recommend this one to anyone who respects the triumphal Hercules series for being quite well made despite its noticeable soullessness, BUT does not care if the game doesn't at all have a mode that's challenging enough and only gives you the 3 gold stars in case you know yourself that everything on the level was done next to perfection.

Nice time-management game to put my mind off things. Comes with a fun and perky (albeit not intrusive) western-themed music and a background story that's in my opinion even for this genre more on the shallow side, but doesn't do anything to diminish the playing experience. The very few times I thought I was stuck the real problem was that I had missed an item (a log for instance) that was already clickable but which I thought was unreachable yet. Playing with open eyes therefore recommended. Good fun while it lasted! Would play again.

A great game, brilliant graphics and sounds with plenty to do, keeps you thinking and busy.

Two thumbs up! This is a really good time-management game from Yustas studios. This game is similar to the Golden Rails game from last year, but it is improved in every way. It is a real change of pace from many of the other time-management games out there, in that you feel like you are actually making a dynamic difference on the map, both with the train-switching mechanism and the worker-allocation mechanism.

First of all, the levels are very interesting. Unlike in series like Hercules or Moai, you're not just fixing buildings and repairing roads; you're a railway engineer and you have to lay track, hire workers, decide where they go (the same pool of workers are used in buildings and in running around the map), and turn switch-signals so that your trains go to different places. The fact that you have to keep your tracks maintained (such as shoveling snow that keeps falling) is a nice dynamic touch.

Additionally, there is a shooting-range mini-game every 10 or so levels for those of you who like to practice for your FPS games.

You can set the level of difficulty, from Casual to Easy to Timed and so forth, depending on whether you want to earn you 3 gold stars per level or have them handed to you. This is a nice touch especially if you're old or lack dexterity or strategic thinking, or even if you're great but just want to zen out and have fun building stuff.

One improvement that I personally like over the first Golden Rails is that there is a meta-game. In two ways: first there is a city that you can improve and decorate depending on how many gold stars you get on the various levels. Secondly, you get optional bonuses that you can use inside the levels if you want to. For example, workers are 30% cheaper to hire, or you earn 10% more money. The more levels you complete, the more bonuses you earn, and you can then go back and replay earlier levels.

There are 60 levels. As always with these games, I recommend playing 5 to 10 at a time. Each level can take 5 to 10 minutes each, so even doing a half-dozen can take an hour. And the game is more fun if you take it as it was designed, just doing a few levels a day.

Finally, I really love the music. I would buy an OST of this music. It's just a jaunty western tune, the kind that they used to play in old cowboy movies when the goofy sidekick would do something funny, so it's very appropriate for this game.

This is a really good time-management game from Yustas studios, makers of "The Viking Brothers" and "The Viking whatever other gender is there besides guys." (Seriously, that was the game where you spend the first levels crying, cooking, and reading romance novel. For "Golden Rail," I give two thumbs up. A definite recommendation.

Golden Rails: Small Town Story is a time management game very similar to the “12 Labours of Hercules” series and while it contains all the gameplay elements you would expect from a time management game, it does add a few new interesting twists to the standard mechanics. You will still need to focus on collecting resources and trading them for other resources, removing obstacles to open up new paths, construct production buildings, but some of these things are made easier, while others are slightly changed.

For one, the resources produced by buildings are now automatically collected after some time, or alternatively you can collect them yourself by mouse hovering over them. Either way, there’s no need to keep track of when the buildings finish producing any more, and this eases the gameplay a lot. On the other hand, many of the levels are built around a train mechanic that periodically brings in a larger quantity of resources to their corresponding stations. These have to first be repaired and then further upgraded to be capable of receiving bigger quantities, and you will also have to reroute the trains to their corresponding stations. Like in other similar games, some of the environmental resources replenish automatically after some time (you can harvest bushes over and over again), but other types of resources will require a manual refill. Cut down trees throughout the level map will grow back again (and be ready for a new round of harvesting) after you talk to a shaman that calls in the rain, or the water tower will have to be periodically refilled so that the surrounding buildings are actively producing.

While in other titles from this genre you can upgrade your workers 2-3 times, in Golden Rails: Small Town Story this is permitted much more and the reason for this is the upgrade mechanic of the production buildings. The workers will not only collect items from the environment, fight off bandits, save hostages, repair the train rails etc, but they can also be assigned / hired for production buildings. A level 2 production building can have either 0, 1 or 2 workers assigned and this number controls its output. As long as your production buildings are upgraded, you can adjust the number of resources you get from a certain type by moving around the workers you have available.

So overall it’s of course still a planning game, but the planning in Golden Rails: Small Town Story is a bit varied from what you’re used to in other time management games. It’s more of a “think big” kind of thing, rather than “plan the order of each step”. Yet even if there are so many mechanics, the levels feel very balanced and you can also influence the gameplay furthermore by selecting the most appropriate set of bonuses before each level (speed / more resources / less costs for hiring workers etc.). There are also three difficulties to choose from (that can be switched at any point), with all achievements being obtainable no matter the difficulty (playing the game on easy mode, without timers, will also award you 3 stars for a level). The stars that you get from completing levels can be used in a separate city panel view where you can spend them on building and upgrading the main buildings encountered in the game (this has only a cosmetic purpose, but it’s very nice to see the city fully rebuilt in the end). Also, in terms of achievements, there are no silly requirements like “beat the developer score on X level”, kudos to that.

I really enjoyed playing Golden Rails: Small Town Story, it brought some new fun mechanics to the genre. The background story isn’t anything spectacular and sometimes it doesn’t make much sense either, but the levels are solid and extremely entertaining. It’s a game that will likely appeal to both experienced and novice time management fans because of its flexible difficulty and the many ways you can adjust your gameplay.

Very enjoyable game, a bit slow (7-10 minutes per level), but really cute. As somebody who played many games with this gametype, from many different developers, I must notice that this one has few advantages compared to others. In this game, when workers acquire some product, you just need to move mouse cursor over it and it's yours, they don't spend/waste time to bring it to safe house like in other similar games. This feature is the one I most liked. Other thing is that on beginning on each level you can select which "bonus" (advantage) you want to use and that you can pick different one for each level (depending what you need the most on that level). One of last unlocking advantages is the one I most liked and that's speed up workers, very useful thing. Other thing I liked is that cute part of upgrading town (which is placed in middle of map), with every earned star you can upgrade it more and more. On end it looks really nice. I also liked that I can track progress of rewards/achievements from the game (on reward tab/button) you can see exactly how much you progressed with each achievement. Only 2 cons I noticed are that music is too repetitive, only one melody with just few seconds repeating and repeating (but actually is kinda cute also) and that for 2 achievements/rewards you need to grind around 1 extra hour in order to obtain those (upgrade houses and plant gardens). By summing up all the impressions I can say that this game is really worth playing and spending time in it (around 13 hours need to complete everything). Hope to see in future more Alawar games like this one... 💖 🚂