A Cosy, Choo-Choo Challenge for Your Inner Child
After playing a lot of train simulation games over the last decade, mostly that of the Train Sim World variety, I often question what I am doing with my life. It isn’t because these games are bad – far from it. It’s just that I find myself asking: why am I driving a train in real-time from Plymouth to Exeter when I should really be updating my CV?
I think the reason is that we all still have that inner child with a sense of play and an aspiration for a “real world” job, like a police officer, a firefighter, or a train driver.
And that’s where Teeny Tiny Trains comes in; a game that is all about those train sets you used to build as a kid, and how perfect the moment is when they all join up. Let’s play with the choo-choos.
This cute little puzzle game is from Short Circuit Studios, the makers of Teeny Tiny Town on mobile and Steam, so you can clearly see a theme running through their work. But this time, instead of a city builder, it’s a train track builder you are hands on with, where you must get your trains from one end of the room to the other without crashing. There isn’t a story to speak of here; rather, the game presents a series of locations around a house, tasking you to lay down track on the bedroom floor or in the living room.
Free-Flowing Tracks
Like all good puzzle games, Teeny Tiny Trains starts off easy as pie. And of course, just when they have hooked you in, the difficulty level ramps up, and you will be thinking about solutions over dinner, in a bar late at night, and even in your dreams. You start with a top-down view of the playing area, usually with two stations. Your goal is to lay down tracks to connect them both so the trains can run freely between the two.
To perform the perfect track laying, you have a choice of two options. The first is a free-flowing drawing system whereby you can design the whole track in one go. The other option is a tile-based placement system, laying one track piece at a time. This second method is there for the more cautious among you who want fewer train crashes when everything kicks off.
When you complete a level and the trains safely get to where they need to be, you get graded based on how quickly you completed the level. If you earn a special award, it unlocks more levels and collectibles, such as different trains to use.
Managing the Rail Network
As you progress through the game, new elements are added to test your train-planning noodle. Junctions are added, as are bridges and scenarios with multiple trains that need to be activated in a certain order. And then, just when you start to feel comfortable with the game mechanics, it throws in another curveball to keep you interested – or frustrated. The good news is that there isn’t any time limit on the puzzles, and there isn’t anyone trying to hurry you along. If you fail, you simply go back to the drawing board and start again.
A Missed Opportunity for Portability
I do think, however, that the difficulty level ramps up a bit too quickly for my liking, and I would have liked a bit more time with the easy-to-medium levels before things got tough. I also think Teeny Tiny Trains has been designed with the mobile or tablet market in mind, where I feel it would fit perfectly. It still works well on the Xbox Series X, but I think I might have preferred to be playing this game on a long train journey on my phone rather than on my TV.
Of course, that would have been made possible thanks to Xbox Play Anywhere and theROG Ally X handheld, but Teeny Tiny Trains fails to support such possibilities. That’s a shame.
The game looks good for its simple design. You have a clear floor space for the puzzle, and on the periphery, you can see what room of the house you are in. So, in the bedroom levels, you can see chests of drawers in the background and other toys strewn around. The UI is easy to use and is cleverly designed. Look, it’s not going to blow your mind with its graphics, but it does a good job with its trains and tracks, and that’s what you need in a game like this.
A Small Price for a Big Brain-Teaser
Teeny Tiny Trains is a cosy game experience that will challenge your brain and evoke memories of your childhood, thinking back to the days where you made these tracks from pure imagination. I liked how the game kept throwing curveballs in terms of extra mechanics to add to the challenge, but I didn’t like the steepness of the difficulty curve quite so much.
Thankfully, it’s an extremely cheap game to purchase, and so if you are into your puzzles, and even better, into your trains, then Teeny Tiny Trains could be right up your track.
Important Links
Teeny Tiny Trains Rolls Onto Xbox With Miniature Magic And Relaxing Railway Puzzling – https://www.thexboxhub.com/teeny-tiny-trains-rolls-onto-xbox-with-miniature-magic-and-relaxing-railway-puzzling/
Buy from the Xbox Store – https://www.xbox.com/en-gb/games/store/teeny-tiny-trains/9MZ84S3KMLHW
