Station to Station Review

03.10.2023 - 20:37 / ign.com

When I first pulled into Station to Station’s voxel-powered railways, I was expecting more of a straight-forward train sim, something akin to the A-Train franchise with a bit of city building. The reality, however, is much different – Station to Station is more like a puzzle game built around some of the tropes of simulation-style games, with stuff like resource and money management unlocking the next possibility in the gameplay loop. It's disarmingly simple to explain: some of the buildings on your map are industries that produce resources. Connect those to the other buildings that need those resources. Connect them all to the cities. Profit.

When everything is connected according to its needs and its ability to produce, you win. That's the game at its most basic. In other words, figure out how to connect everything that needs to be connected and you win. While it may not chug quite so deep into the nitty gritty of rail management, I found myself in love with its clever levels and gorgeous style nonetheless. If anything, the fact it's not what I expected added a layer of unexpected delight to my playthrough. That being said, even if I knew going into Station to Station exactly what is was about, it's just so charming and interesting I would still really enjoy it. The graphics, the pace, the atmosphere, the challenge, it just really appeals to me at the deepest levels of my gamer-being.

Station to Station bills itself as a "relaxing and minimalist game about building railway connections," and I couldn't have said it better myself. There are six different "worlds," for lack of a better term, each split into five or six different levels.

The levels themselves vary in size, but they all take thematically from the world in which they're placed. For example, the "Sunforge Sands" and "Golden Dunes" worlds have you laying tracks in a desert biome, while Eveningstar Valley and Greendale are voxel-infused nods to the American west. These different themes don't really have much bearing on the puzzles themselves (other than a few bonus tasks I'll get to later). I would have liked to have seen some more environmental differences between the worlds, ones that have a real bearing on the strategy involved in solving each level. It seems like a bit of a lost opportunity. There are a few elements that matter in different biomes, like forests that you need to pay to remove in some levels and variation in cliff heights you need to take into account in others, but I would have liked to have seen even more.

Station to Station's worlds are built using some of the most beautiful voxel art I’ve seen since 3D Dot Game Heroes on PS3 (which I only mention because that game rules). The amazing 3D pixelated look is present in every