Growing up, my parents had a neighbor who turned his entire basement into a model train village. It had working lights, and as many as 8 trains chugging along at a time, sprawling over the entire basement. It is mind boggling to this day how much time, patience, and money went into his love filled project. Sweet Transit whisked me back to nostalgia I didn’t even know I had.
In this city builder, trains are the foundation of growing your city. From transporting goods to fuel your villages, or expanding into new frontiers, trains do it all.
Sweet Transit puts you in the role of the world’s builder, giving you the responsibility of growing your city into a train utopia. The games New World mode starts off simple with a single warehouse to build upon, and does a good job teaching you new mechanics as your city continues to grow. As your rail network evolves to support additional types of trains, how you develop train routes and respond to the needs of your city will impact how the game progresses.
Besides New World, the developers also implemented a Scenarios mode to help overcome the logistical challenges you will face in the game. I found it extremely helpful in learning to progress my world.
As a primarily cozy gamer, I went into playing Sweet Transit with more of a laid back outlook. However, I was surprised by the amount of strategic planning and management that was required. At times I did get a bit overwhelmed with all the moving parts. Running multiple towns and train routes can get a bit intense. The game does allow you to interact while in pause mode, which makes the challenge less time based, and more logistical.
I will say, game performance was great. The game ran well, even when I scaled up to a larger city with dozens of trains zipping around.
Summary
With it’s re-playability, nostalgic feeling game play, & strategic depth, Sweet Transit is sure to be a hit for fans of the city-building genre, or for any train enthusiast.
Sweet Transit was reviewed on PC. Gamer Social Club was given a code from the developer. Sweet Transit launched into early access July 28th 2022 with the full 1.0 version launching today, April 22nd 2024.
