Recent reviews by Popsicle Penguin

NIMBY Rails is, on paper, a wonderful combination of mechanics and aspects from other transport-flavor games. I thought it'd be like a minimalistic Transport Fever 2, focusing only on passengers, set in Google Maps. I'm a fan of Transport Fever 2, Cities Skylines, and other games of that nature. I tried this game once in 2021, and again in the middle of 2024.

It is extremely frustrating to get anything done. Reading back through the forums, the way tracks were laid used to be similar to other games: a series of straight sections and curves, determined by nodes. There was no smooth transition from straight to curve, and in the name of fixing that, everything was changed. Now it's more like using the pen tool in adobe Illustrator. The construction of one piece of track directly affects the shape and size of the two pieces on either end. Simply having a straight track with a curve on it is obscenely frustrating to accomplish, because that curve starts halfway into the straight track previously laid, and the new curve is automatically half straight at the end. I may not be doing this system justice, but holy cow was it extremely unintuitive, and even after spending an hour reading forum posts, is just how we do things here. Great.

There's no tutorial, by the way. Hope you can figure things out on your own. You will poke and prod at nodes and lines and tracks and buildings, and if you are coming in with habits from other games, you are bound to fail. The game fights you at every moment in time, just to do something pretty close to what you wanted, but not what you *actually* wanted.

It's too frustrating to pick up. If you've been playing for years, you're probably in a good groove and everything fits like a glove and the controls are second nature by now. Good for you. Unfortunately, the learning curve for a new player is a vertical wall, and I really just don't have the time to spare any more to get past it. I guess i'll check in again in another couple years to see if it's improved and less likely to fight me every step of the way.

The bot crisis seems to be under control, for now. For the time being, we can once again enjoy an all-time great.

Extremely fun driving, fantastic world building, and some really unnerving cosmic horror. Pacific Drive is my GOTY and will be one I return to frequently. Ending was worth the few dozen hours it took to get to it.

Absolutely worth the price, and you'll almost certainly have a blast with this game.

Last Train Home is -so far- an excellent game for those who enjoy the resource management of Frostpunk, Airborne Kingdom, and styled like Foxhole, but with RTS combat elements that, while not ground-breaking in its genre, work well and are engaging enough to those who aren't too sweaty about it. Resources are scarce, but an on-the-fly difficulty adjustment means for those of you afraid of losing like myself, this game can be prevented from giving you gray hair; but you'll always be working hard to scrounge up something to get your train just a few towns further down the line.

The visuals are nice and watching your train roll through the country is quite fun. The voices are well done and the story of having to traverse the entirety of Russia to get home is a compelling one.

Some reviews have mentioned wonky unit actions during RTS segments, and that it worsens as the game goes on. I have encountered one or two strange moments for sure, but I was able to salvage the moment. Some balance patches and bugfixes for these niche moments may be in order.

Strangely enough, every item has the same range unless you count actions, so snipers have the same range as a handgun medic. Odd. I'd like to see that change.

Last Train Home is not a game I have completed. But, so far, I am enjoying it quite a lot, and have no major complaints other than niche moments where balancing or weird unit behavior have broken immersion.

Also, for those of you thinking of buying, do NOT let soldiers run out of stamina! :)