Unrailed: a Game About Chaos

Video games are a great source of entertainment: they’re fun, they’re absolutely art, and they can bring isolated people together. In this new series, Jayden Cammarata- Witherly Heights’ new game critic- reviews a few of his favorites, least favorites, or anywhere in between.

By: Jayden Cammarata

Fans of Overcooked will find an enjoyable spiritual successor to that game in Unrailed!, a fast-paced arcade game about building a train track as far and fast as you can, while the train is on the track. This is an extremely hectic game, but this is a big part of its appeal: learning to make order of the chaos players are presented with is a satisfying challenge, especially when four different players are working on different tasks and what needs to be done is constantly changing. 

In Unrailed!, players chop down forests and mine mountains to gain wood, stone, and room for their train to pass through. Wood and stone can be crafted into track pieces, which can be used to extend the track the train is on. If the train ever reaches the end of its track, it explodes, and the game is over. 

The game’s most well developed game mode is Endless mode, in which players build tracks to keep their train from crashing for as long as possible. Along the way, players can collect golden cogs and spend them on wagons for the train, which make the game less difficult until the train inevitably crashes. These wagons can bring a variety of benefits, such as creating dynamite or turning wood into stone. The players’ growth in power is offset by the train speeding up slightly at each station, meaning that whatever efficiency is gained must immediately be put to efficient use, and that the game never becomes easy or boring. 

Unrailed! derives its fun from confronting players with absolute pandemonium and challenging them with managing it. One of the ways it keeps the chaos present and players engaged is through making sure that players always have something to do. Between chopping wood, mining rocks, placing tracks, and keeping the train from burning, players have little time to spare. The game also makes sure players will be kept under constant time pressure by limiting what players can work on. The game’s field of view is always centered on the train, and since players can’t see what they’re doing while offscreen, they can only work on what the train allows them to, and are constantly being handed new tasks.

Each wagon that can be purchased for the train, while an overall benefit, also has a downside; players are forced to deal with these downsides as well as the other threats in the game, and this is another way it challenges them with a tumultuous environment. There are a few examples of this. First of all, the train blocks players’ movement, and every time a wagon is added to it, it grows into a larger roadblock that’s harder to maneuver around. Next, the train’s engine can be upgraded; doing so slows the train and gives players more time to lay tracks ahead of it, but also moves the train into a new biome, introducing thematic new obstacles, such as yetis and ghosts. Finally, some train cars are more powerful than the alternatives, but also include a considerable downside. For example, the milk wagon makes milk which can be drunk for powerful buffs, but only does so when animals– ideally of several different types– are kept attached to it; these animals are troublesome to corral and constantly get in the way. Along with adding to Unrailed!’s integral chaos, these drawbacks help keep the game balanced.

One of the most flustering things that happens regularly in normal life is communicating with someone else. Unrailed! is more fun when it is most chaotic. As such, the game is best played with other people. The game can be played in singleplayer, and it’s fun this way; solo players are forced to cooperate with a bot, who will follow orders but never take initiative on its own, and coordinating two characters at once almost simulates the chaos of several people trying not to get in each others’ ways; however, it still can’t replicate the interpersonal relationships that multiplayer Unrailed! Involves.

Unrailed! has an online matchmaking system that lets players connect. However, players who meet this way can only communicate through emotes. Therefore, the game is even better when played with friends. The downside of this approach is that it will put players’ friendships to the test. The train is liable to crash and explode if any player makes a mistake, so when a run ends, one player is usually to blame. Although checkpoints can technically be enabled, being sent back to one is usually a grievous blow, and if they are not enabled, the game has to be restarted fully; this keeps the pressure high and the game exciting, but it also means that when a player is blamed for a train crash, they’ll be blamed for a significant loss of progress. Therefore, friendships can easily be broken based on the ending of a run.

Unrailed! has very good music. It’s rhythmic, and blends the steampunk tone a game about trains would elicit with the tone the current biome indicates. It’s also very calm– this doesn’t match the mood of the game, but rather complements it, and balances it out. The voxel art style also helps balance out the chaos of Unrailed!; everything is drawn in such a way that it’s easy to tell what’s what, meaning that the game is chaotic by virtue of its design rather than an obtuse user interface. 

Unrailed can become repetitive after a while. However, this doesn’t matter much. Everything about the game is chaotic, and what’s fun about the game is not continuous discovery of new content, but about this chaos helping build, strengthen, and test bonds between friends. Because of this, even after the game stops feeling new, it never stops being fun.

Final rating: 9/10

This Game ASAP: This video.

The Deicide Boolean: No.

  • Tips:
    • In the shop, you can pick up wagons on your train to reorder them. Take advantage of this: the train’s water level can be refilled through both the water tank and the engine; therefore, it’s better to move the water wagon to the back of the train, so it can be refilled from either end.
    • In singleplayer, the robot knows where everything offscreen is; in an emergency you can tell him to fetch water from a lake offscreen left, or pick up a pickaxe that got left behind
    • If the robot is refusing to place tracks, it’s probably because you haven’t told it where- control is the default command to place a path for it
    • When you get to a train station, things placed on the ground will persist; you can stockpile wood, stone, or even tracks for the next round
    • The milk wagon is a powerful wagon, but the animals that must be attached to it are a significant drawback. However, a level two or above ghost wagon will make not only the milk wagon incorporeal, but the attached animals as well, negating this; those two wagons are powerful together.
    • The Dynamite wagon destroys exponentially (quadratically, technically) more blocks based on its level, meaning it gets significantly more powerful when upgraded. The Supercharger wagon and the Buckinator wagon can both be used to increase the dynamite’s level above 3, with dramatic results.