I spent a rather embarrassing amount of time trying to match up Running Train‘s hyper-realistic train lines and Japanese terrain with the real world. And in doing so, I paid the game the highest possible compliment. This extraordinarily realistic sim made by one-person development team Novatetsu Games is in fact set in a fictional region of Japan, but is created so lovingly that you’ll believe it’s real life.
I’m not exactly a train enthusiast, nor indeed particularly au fait with the range of train sim games previously available, but in Running Train I’ve found something absolutely captivating. And most bizarrely, I’ve found that quality not by actually playing it, but rather by letting it play itself. While the game encourages you to master the reasonably simple controls of its range of perfectly crafted engines, you can also just set it to play itself and then take over the free camera as it does. Doing so has brought me so much pleasure.
Played properly, Running Train asks you to carefully control your speed, braking, and prompt, safe arrival at train stations, and rewards or penalizes you accordingly. By turning off in-game guides and even the UI, you can earn higher scores and more credit, contributing to your overall rating for each of the 42 different routes it currently features. These routes feature ten 12-minute routes on the fictional Fukugawa Line, and a further 32 of hugely varying length on the equally made up Sankai Main Line. They can be as short as six minutes, or as long as 44, each set at different times of day.
And oh my goodness, it’s so pretty. Vast stretches of imagined Japanese towns and countryside have been created (40 kilometers of track, apparently), and it’s not just randomly placed assets. Jumping into that free camera, I couldn’t believe it when I noticed that even powerlines are logically placed, with wires beginning at substations, then stretching across pylon networks. Roads are filled with traffic, cars are parked in bays outside apartment buildings, Shinto temples sit on hillsides, ferries bob on the sea while waves lap onto shores.
The key thing about all these details is that…you don’t see most of them from the train! If you stuck with the driver cam, you’d miss almost all of it. It’s so much effort that the developers could easily have gotten away without, but it adds so much by being included. It’s also possible to play any of the routes in different weather conditions, from sunny days to torrential rain, or indeed in either spring or winter, with optional blizzards covering the entire game in snow.
Zoom out far enough—and for some reason it will let you—and you see the tiles, the roads that don’t line up, and the various tricks and techniques that allow it to look so realistic from low down. But don’t do that! That’s silly. This is a train sim, not a plane sim, you’ve no business in the sky.
From those who know what they’re doing, Steam reviews could not be more glowing. “Honestly, I really, really do not know what to say,” begins one, before adding, “Hands down the most beautiful train sim that has been released on the market thus far. The modeling is top tier. The environment details, the clouds, the lighting, the weather effects all of it is just absolutely insane!”
Another says, “Best train simulator game so far!” while a third compliments the solo dev for including support for the Zuiki MASCON, a bespoke peripheral for train driving sims.
This is all for the Early Access release, and there are still big plans to make the game far more detailed. The developer wants to add a passenger system (currently the trains run empty) and a conductor mode, and the ultimate goal is up to 100 km of track. The hope is to have that all done by the end of next year.
As it is, you can absolutely enjoy it as a top-notch train sim, but for me the experience has been about letting the model railway run itself as I swoop about in the camera. It’s a rare pleasure.
Running Train is out now in Early Access on Steam for $18.
