There’s a certain sort of person whose eyes will brighten from flat dullness at just a whisper of the words ‘Transport Tycoon’ and another whose heart will race should they hear ‘Factorio’ mentioned nearby. Sweet Transit, a city builder focusing on complex automated railway networks, combines elements of both games into one potentially near-intoxicating mix. After nearly two years in Steam Early Access, the full release train is about to pull into the station fully loaded with version 1.0.
Coming from ex-Factorio artist and solo developer Ernestas Norvaišas and published by Team17, Sweet Transit is a game about building, planning, and managing railway networks to ensure needs are met and goods are delivered on time, right where they need to go. Unlike most city building games, most of your time won’t be spent plonking libraries down or designating residential zones, instead the railway is king.
Starting from a single warehouse and a small village, Sweet Transit asks you to expand outwards, connecting settlements, building industries, and designing a flourishing economy that stimulates growth. You’ll start off probably just making sure that your village’s workers can get to a nearby coal seam to mine its inky treasures before returning with them but before you know it your train tracks will cover the land, working like a colossal locomotive machine.
It’s that automation, as well as the prior experience of the developer, which ensures that Sweet Transit has the scent of Factorio on it. You’ll be building not only to manage needs and to keep cities growing but also for the simple joy of having a vast engine chugging away which requires minimal supervision. For the true train tinkerer the game comes with an in-depth signalling system, which helps keep intricate routes running smoothly and stops your trains from smashing into each other.
As such you can think of Sweet Transit less like a pure city builder and more like a game where you’re encouraging villages to grow into cities, coaxed into expansion through your iron snakes of steam and smoke, connecting the land with a seamless network. It may seem odd to some to have an entire genre of games like Factorio, Satisfactory, and now Sweet Transit where the end goal is to reduce your input but the sheer satisfaction of putting together a colossal system that just works by itself cannot be understated.
Sweet Transit will be hitting version 1.0 and getting its full release on Monday, April 22. If you’re interested in starting your own railway empire, you can head over to Steam and choo-choo-choose to add the game to your wishlist now.
Should the siren-song of the steam train’s whistle be calling to you, why not check out our guide to the very best train games you can play. If instead you’re looking to get stuck into the nitty-gritty, our best management games guide will see you poring over the figures in no time.
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