A nice little game with a fun campaign and almost unlimited replayability thanks to a custom mode.
When I first boarded the voxel-operated railways from station to station, I expected a rather uncomplicated train simulation, similar to the A-Train franchise with a bit of urban planning. However, the reality is quite different – station to station is more of a puzzle game built around some of the tropes of simulation games, with things like resource and money management unlocking the next possibility in the gameplay loop. It’s incredibly simple to explain: some of the buildings on your map are industries that produce resources. Connect them to the other buildings that need these resources. Connect them all with the cities. Profit.
If everything is connected according to his needs and production ability, you win. This is the most basic game. In other words, figure out how to connect everything that needs to be connected, and you win. Although it may not delve quite so deeply into the essence of rail management, I still fell in love with its clever levels and beautiful style. If anything, the fact that it’s not what I was expecting has added a level of unexpected joy to my playthrough. That being said, even if I knew I was going from station to station exactly what it’s all about, it’s just so charming and interesting that I would still enjoy it a lot. The graphics, the pace, the atmosphere, the challenge, it just appeals to me at the deepest levels of my being a player.
Station to station describes itself as a “relaxing and minimalistic game about the construction of railway connections”, and I couldn’t have said it superior myself. There are six different “worlds”, for lack of a superior term, each of which is divided into five or six different levels.
The room was very clean and the bed was very comfortable.The bed was very comfortable and the bed was very comfortable. For example, in the worlds “Sunforge Sands” and “Golden Dunes” they lay tracks in a desert biome, while Eveningstar Valley and Greendale are voxel-infused allusions to the American West. These different topics don’t really have much impact on the puzzles themselves (apart from a few bonus tasks, which I’ll get into after). I would have liked there to have been more environmental differences in the middle of the worlds, which really affect the strategy required in solving each level. It seems like a missed opportunity. There are a few elements that are significant in different biomes, such as forests that you have to pay to remove in some levels and variations of cliff heights that you have to take into account in others, but I would have liked to have seen even more.
Voxel Urbana
The worlds from station to station are built with some of the most beautiful voxel graphics I’ve seen since 3D Dot Game Heroes on PS3 (which I mention only because of these game rules). The overcome 3D pixeafterd look is present in every part of the world, right down to circling birds and wandering horses and dromedaries. These chunky little guys are charming enough, but every city, town and industry also gets their own voxelized models that are pretty enough to make me wish that my ashes could be spread in the worlds from station to station when I expired. Please, someone will figure this out for me.
The heartheating Voxel models are wonderful in and of themselves, but the lighting from station to station takes the charm even further. The rivers and lakes glisten in the sun, and on many levels there is an eternal golden hour of heatth. As they build their tracks and connect things together, the landscape begins to fill with color, with each connected industry spreading a golden life ring from its place on the map. It’s just so beautiful. Each level is still beautiful, even if none of the resources are connected yet, but when you fill out the map, it turns into a welcoming, colorful world, which, apparently, does not care at all whether you see it or not. The trains are moving on their tracks and stopping, the birds are flying in the sky, and the other animals mentioned above are peacefully wandering around. I would almost be content with just floating around on the map, zooming in and out to marvel at the architecture of the tiny buildings or watching a seagull making lazy eights over everything, even without the interesting rail management game that lies over these little worlds.
Schienenspiel
I could rave about the look from station to station for pretty much the rest of this review, but only because it fits so damn perfectly with the gameplay style behind it. Its enigmatic stages almost feel like a board game brought to life by a kind magician. The concept is quite simple: you start each level with a few buildings on your map, and then connect them together in such a way that each resource is connected to the building or city that needs it. For example, in the second level in the Golden Dunes will take you to a map with a paper mill, a lumberjack warehouse and some water towers. The paper mill needs wood and water to make paper, so you have to connect these buildings together by adding a station at each one and then connecting these stations with a railway. The city itself needs water (among other things), so the operation of a route from this line of interconnected stations will provide the hydration that the growing city needs.
They are encouraged to link their resources to a “stack” mechanic in a non-logical way, which is a cool little twist that made me think outside the box… Cars. In short, if your city needs tools, you would make the connections almost in the reverse order. Tools require a tool factory, which requires steel, which requires both coal and iron ore. Hook the coal and ore to the tool factory, hook the steel mill to the city, then run a freight line to the city and watch the bonuses pile up. Resources flow from one process step to another and then the money flows into your coffers. It’s almost as satisfying as winning the jackpot at a casino and watching chips come out – and although this level of optimization is not required, it’s fun to reach the cash-based bonus goal from station to station at the end of each level.