Railbound

About Railbound

Railbound puts you in the cab rather than above the map. You pick a route, take the driver's seat and run a real service: open the doors, wait out the scheduled hold, release the brakes and bring a train full of people to the next platform without throwing them around. The windscreen is most of the screen, which is the point — this is a game about looking out of it.

There are a hundred routes across ten environments, from the Western Ghats and the Konkan coast to the Swiss Alps, coastal Japan, northern taiga, American canyons and African savanna. Each one is a generated scenic interpretation with its own terrain, weather palette and fictional intermediate stations — not a surveyed replica of a real railway. Distances are compressed and railway rules are simplified, deliberately, so a journey is a few minutes rather than a few hours.

Driving is a skill the game actually scores

Every journey is rated out of five on four things: punctuality against the timetable, how accurately you stopped at each platform mark, how smooth the ride was, and whether you got everyone there without an incident. Those four numbers decide what you are paid, so a driver who brakes early and holds the line speed earns noticeably more than one who arrives first.

The career runs ten grades, from Trainee to Legend of the Line. Grades open routes; coins buy them. You start with three routes and two trains, and everything else — the vintage steam locomotive, the bullet train, the Maharajas'-inspired royal rake — is something you work towards.

The depot

Coins are spent in the depot on four things. Trains, which change how the service feels to drive. Liveries, which are paint and nothing else, so buying one can never be the reason somebody out-ranks you. Cab upgrades, which do change the simulation: better brake gear shortens your stopping distance, bogie dampers slow how fast a rough ride costs you comfort points, and a better coach interior raises the fare every passenger pays. And routes, which open the rest of the network.

Or just watch

Not every journey has to be driven. Sit back & enjoy hands the train to an automatic driver and moves you into the passenger cabin, where you can look out of either window or around the carriage while the route runs itself. Automatic journeys still pay, at about a third of the rate, because riding the Konkan coast at sunset is a thing this game is for.

Controls

W and S set the throttle, the up and down arrows release and apply the brake, D opens the doors, H sounds the horn, C changes the camera, A hands over to the automatic driver and the space bar is the emergency brake. On a phone or tablet the cab desk is replaced by on-screen throttle and brake pads with the switches between them, so the windscreen keeps the space it deserves.