I would say this game is okay-ish. It relies hard on RNG. On some runs: you get nice equipment for your train. In other runs, you get nothing (even with re-roll) so you are dead after wave 5-6.
The concept is great: You have a train you can move in 2 directions using your mouse.
With WASD you move drones, to collect coins, attack enemies and use their skill like "dash" or "push back".
For my taste, the "perma upgrade tree" lacks many many updates. You have around 20-25 updates. But most of 'em doesnt feel useful. You can upgrade the train to do "run over damage". and you have 3 trees for the 3 start-drones.

Why are there no additional updates like:
- coin collect range
- train hp
- train move speed
- drone speed
- "collect all remaining coins when reaching the next station" (yes: if you reach the station and the time is over, all coins are lost)

So in summary: I like the concept and the idea, but it feels hard like a random generator.
You can lock certain items to buy them in the next station but there is e.g. no "ban" to remove some choices from the list. Re-roll becomes more expensive every time you use it and the price doesn't reset on the next station. So it's very hard to create a proper built if the RNG hates you.

TL;DR: It's a fun game. I like trains. There isn't a huge amount of content at the time of this review, but it was absolutely worth picking up.

I found Endless Rails completely by chance while looking through Steam's release calendar. I'd never seen or heard anything about it beforehand. I watched the trailer and basically thought, "I love roguelikes, I like trains, and this looks cool," so I bought it.

And honestly, I had a blast.

My biggest problem is that I'm already yearning for more.

I had effectively completed most of what the game currently has to offer within about 5 hours, and had 100% completed it roughly 2 hours later. That said, I didn't stop there — I also pushed a run all the way to wave 100.

At the moment, the game is a little light on content and variety. There aren't many enemy types, and the lack of boss variety becomes especially noticeable once you've played for a while. I'm sure more will come with future updates, but right now you do start seeing the same things repeatedly.

The skill/upgrade tree is also pretty lacklustre. There simply isn't much to upgrade, and most of the meaningful weapon upgrades focus on the SMG, shotgun and rifle categories.

That makes those weapon types far and above the strongest choices, which takes away some of the roguelike flavour. Part of the fun of this genre is being able to stumble into weird builds and make different weapons work, whereas here I often felt pushed toward the same few weapon types because the upgrade system heavily favours them.

There are also definitely some bugs and performance issues, although nothing I'd personally call critical during normal progression.

Things got considerably more interesting during my wave 100 run.

Around wave 94, the game started going completely crazy — freezing, locking up and eventually crashing. Thankfully, the game saves your progress whenever you reach the next station, so the entire run wasn't wiped. At least in my case, I was able to load back in and continue.

The shop state didn't fully survive the crash, which hurt the run, but the run itself did.

From there I had a ridiculous number of freezes and crashes, particularly around waves 98 and 99, but somehow I eventually managed to push through and reach wave 100.

Technically, the run is still alive as I'm writing this.

Realistically, though, the constant freezing and crashing at this point has made the save almost unplayable.

Despite all of that, I still came away really enjoying the game.

The core idea works, the gameplay loop is fun, and there's something extremely satisfying about gradually turning your train into an increasingly ridiculous rolling death machine.

It just needs more — more enemies, more bosses, more weapons, more meaningful upgrades, and more opportunities for different builds.

For the price I paid, though, I've already gotten my money's worth.

Recommended.

Also: I like trains.

The game is quite challenging, and has a really interesting concept. However the evo tree is lacking imo, as the upgrades it offers is quite little, and limiting. However, I'd would prefer it if the game would have a records section, so that players can compare with themselves on their progress within the game.