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Railbound, the most recent title from Polish studio Afterburner, makers of Golf Peaks and inbento, is a super-cute puzzler of polished presentation and deceptively monstrous issue. It begins ever so innocently, asking for somewhat railway line to attach a carriage to its engine, and sings with toots and chuffs as a billow of smoke from the locomotive clears to disclose the following stage. By the a centesimal degree, nonetheless, it turns into a head-scratcher that’ll put on your nails to nubs.
The aim is to couple vehicles to engines in numbered order. A degree begins with one to 4 vehicles spaced round a grid and the engine sitting on the fringe of the play space. You have got a set variety of monitor items that may go in any path, turning and branching off one another. You join the vehicles to the engine with rails such that automotive primary will arrive there first, adopted by quantity two and so forth. Once you press go, the vehicles rattle alongside charmingly and also you see in case your plan labored. It’s so intuitive an idea that we’d performed a very good 20 ranges earlier than we realised that that is completely not how trains work.
There are eight units of levels, every set introducing a brand new mechanic, corresponding to limitations that should be opened by working over buttons, or numbered stations to be stopped at by the suitable automotive. It’s a little bit of a disgrace that gimmicks from earlier units are generally left behind fairly than expanded on and mixed with new mechanics. Nonetheless, the later challenges do begin to tie every little thing collectively in splendidly advanced methods.
We received’t faux that we solely used the trace system to check it out for you, expensive reader: we’d have been fully stumped with out it on the closing ranges. It really works by revealing the right placement of some monitor sections at a time, requiring a little bit of further trial and error earlier than an additional trace is on the market. It’s a very good stability of creating you might have a correct attempt however not making you undergo.
Controlling all that is solely pleasurable. The small grids are swiftly navigable with the controller, and good button assignments imply there’s no fiddling by means of menus. It’s equally pleasant to play with the touchscreen and even makes use of some satisfying HD Rumble. Swap looks like the proper platform for the sport.
There’s a good handful of hours to be spent working by means of over 150 puzzles, though we did have a few small gripes. For one, a few of the cleverer checks are off the vital path, so their instructive concepts could be missed alongside the way in which. The play grid did additionally really feel fairly limiting by the top. The small space meant there was most likely just one right reply to most, if not all, puzzles. The train-set enchantment of constructing creatively felt prefer it was at all times simply over the horizon, however we by no means acquired there.
Nonetheless, there’s no resisting the allure of Railbound’s chirpy cel-shaded fashions and, though they belie some fiendish challenges, the issue curve is as clean as it’s steep. Excellent for handheld play, Afterburn has laid down an amazing addition to Swap’s library of puzzlers.
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