Unrailed!

“X meets Y” is often treated as a creativity shortcut, but it’s hard to argue with the results sometimes. Unrailed! is Overcooked! meets Blast Corps meets Minecraft (with some roguelike thrown in for good measure), and the result is a robust experience that’s not quite like any single other game in existence. It’s an efficiency-focused co-op affair where 2-4 players gather resources and desperately build tracks for a train that’s already in motion. That premise alone offers plenty of inherent tension and excitement, but there are enough mechanics here that four players will rarely be performing the same actions at the same time. Tasks include building bridges, fighting fires, placing dynamite, clearing snow, and capturing wild animals, and all of them evolve as the train advances through increasingly strange environments. The systems interlock so well that it’s oddly captivating when a team coordinates effectively. I’ve literally been seeing this gameplay when I close my eyes for a week, and I’m humming the music as I type this.

Unfortunately, there are a lot of little annoyances swirling around the core gameplay that keep it from being as great as it could be. The visuals, for example, use untextured voxels with dynamic lighting and an isometric perspective, which is a perfectly inoffensive appearance until you have to differentiate two objects of the same colour or navigate behind things. Additionally, the simplistic controls and cluttered terrain lead to occasional struggles with getting your character to do what you’re asking of them. I’m also ambivalent towards the roguelike structure. On the one hand, it’s almost certainly responsible for how addicting the gameplay is, and it’s fairly balanced as these things go – it doesn’t dole out effortless wins and miserable losses at the whim of the RNG. But on the other hand, a deep run can take hours and come to an abrupt end with a single poorly-timed mistake, making it probably the most devastating roguelike to lose that I’ve ever encountered. On a final, more positive note, the game is surprisingly enjoyable even while playing solo, as you’re given a decently competent robot companion that can be commanded fairly comprehensively using the existing in-game communication tools.