Railroad Revolution

Let’s move on to the game that was my shelf shame. It stayed shrink-wrapped for over a year because I had confused it with Rail Rivals and, from what I had seen of that one, I was not interested at all. Thankfully, a beloved influencer spotted it on the shelf and delivered the perfectly correct line: “Wait, you haven’t played this?” Well, we played it. And now I already have two plays in three days, and I am almost certain the third will arrive before the week is over.

At its heart, Railroad Revolution is an optimization game with a simple, direct logic. In every game, I am trying to find the most efficient sequence for my choices and make my moves work together as effectively as possible. Nobody needs to burden it with complicated explanations to get the point: you play, look for the best use of what is in front of you, and watch your plan come together.

Its flow is exactly where it wins me over: clean, quick, and tight enough that choices matter without weighing the group down. Interaction is not the point here in the sense of arguments or flashy attacks; the interest lies in doing a better job with my own optimization. It is one of those games that immediately makes you think, “one more time, now that I understand what I should have done.”

I would not call it a great game on the level of Nippon or Madeira. But I would call it quite good, enjoyable, and honest, precisely because it does not overstay its welcome and does not pretend to be more complicated than it needs to be. It does not have tremendous replayability, but honestly, why should that matter? The right way to use it is one play a year, once the optimal strategies have been forgotten and you can look at it again with fresh eyes. What’s Your Game? remains an IBB: Instant Blind Buy.