Railroad Tracks

Normally I like this developer. However, this game has some serious problems. The "hints" on their page are nothing of the kind because it's impossible to identify where you are. It's all fields, tunnels, blocky buildings, or mazes that you eventually have to back out of, and you're so zoomed in that you can't find your way. No objects can be interacted with. I still found my way through the areas ok, sans any of the promised memories, until I reached the weird blue maze with the bird head shapes. After blundering around in there for a solid hour, I gave up. I see from the other reviews that I'm not the only person who can't make any sense or any headway out of this. Where AM I? What the hell am I doing? @_____@

RPG Maker strikes again! Railroad Tracks is one of hundreds of low effort retro-pixel JRPG ripoffs spamming the Steam catalog, made with the RPG Maker video game construction kit... in their own words, "Our easy to use tools are simple enough for a child." Like all RPG Maker "games", this is essentially a bunch of low quality/canned assets from RPG Maker coupled with a cringeworthy high school anime club fan fiction. Deviating from the traditional Final Fantasy ripoff that RPG Maker is intended for, the developers decided to instead make a 2D JRPG style adventure game. This game doesn't feature any RPG mechanics, it's just bad, bad storyline. Making JRPGs is the only thing RPG Maker can do, and it's not even very good at that, so using it for anything else is bound to end up a disaster, as is the case here. So this is a pretty bad 2D "adventure" (more like a walking sim) with an attempt at some kind of noir, clown based memory mystery thing... ugh. It's bad. The developer did such a bad job at game design and leading or hinting the player through this walking sim they had to publish their own community walkthrough, instead of correcting the problems with the game. As w…

Recommend ONLY for hardcore Yume Nikki heads - and even then, with heavy caveats. (Ignore my playtime; I played the itch version.) This is basically a YNFG. Several of these reviews kinda get mad at a musical for having too much singing. That said, for a YNFG, it's a very, very sparse one. No effects, no puzzles, no chasers, no unique interactions, no sleeping and waking. If you like 'em for the exploration and the atmosphere, you stand a good chance of liking this one. If it's for anything mechanical, turn back now. Instead of effects you collect "memories", which serve as free-use warps to where you got them. Maps are, as a general rule, RIDICULOUSLY oversized with nothing to fill them. In many cases it's clear they were designed referencing the RPG Maker XP editor on a 1080p monitor, not the game window or the player walkspeed, creating an effect in gameplay somewhat like a camera zoomed in too far on a sloth. Within an hour I cracked it open in RMXP and patched it to double my speed; I strongly recommend you do the same to make the walking bearable. The game isn't encrypted or even missing its project file, so at least it's easy enough. There is an unnecessarily long fadeout…

I don't subscribe to the idea of the game being a weaker experience because you get lost. The feeling of being lost for so long and then stumbling into something important and meaningful is a great experience. HOWEVER it borrows a bit too much from Yume Nikki's art direction. It feels less inspired and more derivative. Also the new terrible AI banner and title card look terrible. Pay an artist.

train

This is a nice little project but if this is in fact was inspired by yume nikke according to other reviewers than this is not the way to do an exploration game. You want people to explore and the best way to do that is to not set any objectives at all. Of course objects of interest and story are a great way to enhance the immersion but I'd feel much more eager to look around without fear of missing something that leads to endgame which is supposedly the goal of the game. Also I wanted to take a screenshot but F12 button closed the game and the only save I had was in the very beginning of the game.