Trainz Trouble

its so cool its about controlling a train like a train commander!

Trainz Trouble is an older mobile app from 2014. It's a venerable 10 years old at the time of this review. This is a simple pathing puzzle mobile app (sold as "Trainz Crisis" on the app stores) where you're given a grid with various stop signals and rail switches. You have to tap on the rail switches and stops to ensure all the trains get where they need to go without running into each other or obstacles. Shallow stuff, but it seems the developer is hell bent on copy + pasting this mobile app onto Steam as much as possible... there's several copy + paste + renames of this mobile app on Steam and a lot of "DLC" (for a mobile app??). None of which is delivering a great deal of value to gamers.

From a technical perspective, as a mobile app, this doesn't meet basic minimum requirements that most PC gamers expect as standard.

The mobile app features low-polygon assets with cartoony, mobile app style shader effects, making this look like a barely functional mobile app from 15 years ago. This visual style is a method that lazy devs often use when they have a lack of interest/capabilty to create highly detailed, high poly models and instead use shader effects to disguise that shortcoming under the name of "art", or "We made it look bad on purpose", which really isn't something gamers should have to put up with. It's unclear why the developers weren't willing to arrange high quality, high polygon count contemporary assets and high resolution textures for the mobile app. It's far below the state of the art visuals gamers expect as a result of their decisions.

The controls can't be customised because the game has such a dumbed down, simplified interface that it's just iPhone screen tapping stuff. In fact, the mobile app port is so lazy they didn't bother changing the word "Tap" for the UI interactions. Lazy. Who do they think we are? The fact that the interface is this dumbed down might be seen as a problem in itself, however... this is a fairly shallow experience if you're the kind of gamer that likes to play games with deep, rich control schemes and interaction. You'll get none of that here.

Because this is a mobile app, it carries a number of deliberate design deficiencies. Compromises were made to cater to the iPhones that the mobile app was designed for. These are unfortunate handicaps and limitations that PC gamers shouldn't be forced to accept, but it's evident that PC was an afterthought for the iPhone developers who are to blame for this. The mobile app is deficient as a result of these choices, and would have been so much better without the handicaps that designing games for mobile phones forces upon a game. Once more, mobile devs have made gaming worse for everyone. I didn't spend thousands on building a gaming rig just so I could pretend it's an iPhone.

These technical defects push this mobile app below acceptable standards for any modern PC game.

The poor quality of this mobile app is reflected by how many people spent time with it. At the time of this review, SteamDB shows the all-time peak player number was only 7 players. This is a remarkably low number, and now, the only player activity occurs once or twice a month, presumably someone loading it up to see what it is then quickly uninstalling it. Considering there's over 120 million gamers on Steam and well over 100,000 games for gamers to choose from, the overwhelming lack of interest in this low quality mobile app is to be expected.

So, should you buy this mobile app? Is this one of the best of the 100,000+ games on Steam?

Trainz Trouble is relatively cheap at $2 USD, but it's not worth it. Given the defects and quality issues with the mobile app, coupled with the unrealistic price, this is impossible to recommend. This is also competing with over 11,000 free games available on Steam, many of them far better than this paid product.

This game might be a bit old but it's one of the best little train puzzle games out there, and it's very cheap too.