Recent reviews by John Helldiver

This game might just be one of the best games I have ever played. Server issues aside - those should get sorted out soon - I am having an absolute blast with this game. The game absolutely nails gameplay (gunplay especially), soundtrack, sound effects and visuals. This game has given me some of the most fun experiences in years, it's just so fun.

The performance on any craft containing multiple engines is horrible, and in general the game doesn't run very well. I had the audacity to build a spaceplane with 7 rapier engines, and the game proceeded to give me 13 fps. On a Ryzen 5 5600X/AMD RX 7900XT build with 32GB RAM. In 1080p.

It is also still very buggy, the rockets are floppy noodles and parts of your rockets just fall off after loading a quicksave. Pretty much all the features I was excited for are missing (career, colonies, interstellar, multiplayer), although I did know that before buying and managed my expectations accordingly. I still got disappointed. I expect better for 50€.

It doesn't matter how many features the game has and how pretty it is if every launch at the KSC is a choppy slideshow. The team needs to fix these performance issues ASAP. It should be the top priority.

Edit: I have since requested and received a refund, despite having played more than 2 hours.

I see a lot of potential in this game. I like the idea of a scaled down map and company management like in ETS.

However:

Unfortunately, I couldn't even get to the management aspect as completing simple delivery missions is already a pain to do. The signals tend to all switch to red (yellow?), which you don't seem to get a penalty for, but the small signals at track switches, which are barely visible in the way too frequent dense fog, often turn red randomly. You do get a warning that a train is approaching, however it would be nice if it didn't spawn on the same track that you were on heading in your direction. When you leave the game while on a long delivery mission, you respawn at the start point without your cargo or contract after starting the game again.

The map is at times nicely done but then has some glaring flaws at other spots, for example with rails bending in a sharp angle up or down when an incline starts or ends. The train sounds are a bit strange. The horns and in-cabin sound effects are decent, though I don't understand why a diesel engine's RPM would be directly tied to the speed of the engine. On the outside camera though, the sounds are for some reason much quieter than on the inside, which makes no sense.

I'm honestly a little concerned that this might just be a cash grab, because I don't see all the issues being fixed and the game being polished enough to be seen as complete in 6-10 months, as stated by the developers. I think that short amount of time is unrealistic, especially considering they plan to add more map content as well. For now, I've refunded the game, because it still has some major issues, like the signals, or the lack of a save option during a contract, which makes it not very fun to play. I hope to see improvements made to the game, in which case I will consider buying a copy again.

The premise of the game is very simple. You steer a "Hypertrain" through a low-poly, retro-graphics but futuristic-looking world. There are cities and roads with multiple lanes connecting those cities, which are auto-generated with a randomimzable seed. You can also build your own roads. Each city offers missions you can complete which help you earn money. With your earned money, you can upgrade your train (add more cars that upgrade your train's stats). Other players (Multiplayer) or AI (Singleplayer) competes with you to be the first Hypertrain to reach 50 cars length, which wins you the game.

Play as a cargo/passenger runner
You can transport cargo between cities to earn money. You do this by accepting cargo transport missions at a city. Certain cities demand certain goods depending on their size. Once their demand is satisfied, they upgrade (e.g. from a Village to a City) and demand even more resources afterwards. If you are smart about it you can make a city grow huge.

You can also transport passengers, which helps cities grow population wise (but does not upgrade them). The more often you transport passengers safely in a row, the more they trust you and you get a hefty bonus for a non-death streak.

Both transport options give you a bonus based on how fast you delivered cargo/passengers (up to 2 times).

Play as an explorer
Exploring is also viable, as discovering new cities gives you a welcome bonus, discovering unconnected cities by building new roads gives you a huge bonus and discovering all cities on the map gives you a gigantic bonus.

Play as a battle train
You can also hunt marauders, which are malicious hypertrains that shoot at you as soon as they see you. If you destroy them, you can pick up the money they dropped. You can also accept bounties to increase your earnings.

Play as a constructor
New since v0.9 (December 2018) is building new connections as a game strategy. This is by far my favourite part of the game. You can build your own roads, and build them more effectively with construction wagons (you can go faster while building roads in front of you). Connecting two cities that want to be connected (you have to accept a mission) gives you huge amounts of money, helping you progress towards victory.

One game lasts a few hours, depending on AI difficulty. It is quite challenging at first, but once you get the hang of it, it's incredibly fun. It is important to stick to once strategy if you want to win (don't mix hunting marauders with transporting cargo for example). You can upgrade your train to go up to 1000 km/h (625 mph) and cruise through the world. The roads are populated with traffic as well as other AI-controlled Hypertrains, which makes the world feel alive. I personally keep playing after you reach 50 wagons, since the game lets you do so, and building new connections and watching cities grow is a lot of fun for me. As of v0.8, Multiplayer has been added to the game.

The game currently has a few annoying bugs, but the developer is personally answering every bug report I filed so far and it seems like he is taking fixing those bugs seriously. I'm certain the game will improve with time. I tried out multiplayer back when it came out and it was unfortunately very buggy, but it has already been updated and fixed according to the developer. I have yet to try it out. Multiplayer unfortunately currently is only over direct IP connections, but the developer is working on a server browser.

This game is only a little over 8€ (and currently discounted 50%) at the time of writing (December 2018), and the developer is actively updating and developing the game. This low price is a really good bargain for what you get and the positives far outweigh the negatives, which will surely only get better in the future. I would 100% recommend the game, since it has already brought me 23 hours of fun and I can get over a few minor bugs, especially for this price.