The world needs stuff but stuff is over there and civilization is over here, and that’s why we have logistics. One of the most efficient bits of transportation infrastructure is the basic all-purpose train, which despite the business' history both recent and since its inception is romanticized to no end. There’s just something that feels right about these massive, powerful machines carting goods across the countryside, connecting suppliers of raw materials with hubs of industry and eventually the towns and cities that need the final product. It takes actual effort not to love watching trains go about their routes and there have been uncountable dozens of games letting people get their hands on every aspect of the industry, from being a conductor, to running it as a business, and even playing with a wooden train set. Station to Station is the latest train game and it’s a chilled take on the genre, letting you plop down stations and tracks to connect the buildings on an idyllic but washed-out landscape, bringing life and color to the world with every new connection.
The title Station to Station describes the gameplay perfectly, with each level being a landscape with a couple of buildings scattered across it that rely on each other to work. A farm producing grain needs to get its product to the mill to create wheat, wheat needs a baker, and the baker’s bread goes to the city. Cities need multiple inputs to work, such as milk, fish, etc, and the goal is to run rails to link it all up. The first step is to drop a station beside each stop along the way, each of which has two sets of tracks that can be connected on either side. So long as the various industries are connected on the network order doesn’t matter, with a train more than capable of bringing a car of wheat past a baker on the way to the mill and then bringing a load of flour back on the return trip.
There needs to be a little care in laying down the stations seeing as once connected to the rail line it can’t be deleted or moved, which can be an actual problem when you thought the station was connected to a city but it turned out to just be near some decorative buildings on the outskirts and the “not connected” indicator gets lost in the moment-to-moment gameplay of wiring up a cute little landscape’s worth of industry. By the time the first set of levels is complete cards are added to the mix, giving cheap amenities for when cash is tight, but the basic rhythm is station-track-station-track and then a few new buildings get added to the landscape. And then, when everything is finally connected, you may either chase after a couple of bonus goals or just tool across the map for a closer look than the sky-high planning view that’s most efficient for laying the tracks, simply enjoying watching the trains run their courses over the lovely voxely environments.
Station to Station is out today on Steam with a new launch trailer to show off its relaxation-oriented gameplay. Not every game needs to be a white-knuckle ride or test of intricate systems logistics; sometimes it’s nice just to see the trains going about their business, connecting the resources to the places that need them most.
