Rolling Line: A Model Railroad Simulator

Very cool.

My fantasy project:

Recreate the U.S. rail system of, oh, I don't know, 1850 or 1870? And make a real-time train engineer sim.

I like the idea of barely-interactive games that span days (for a longer train route). I like the lack of engagement that allows you to either walk away for long stretches or to sit back and amusedly watch the "mid waste" roll by.

As with so many modern gaming efforts though, the work is in the modeling, not the actual rendering/implementation.

I love the train magazines in this. I hadn’t thought about them for ages, but they have a very distinct nostalgic feeling that immediately made me happy :)

It works neatly in VR, too!

I just wish the terrain editing was better. It has a frustrating system where you place pre-cut blocks, and you’re kind of expected to abuse them to get what you want, but that sort of thinking never works for me. Some kind of voxel editing - or just plain old height map painting - would be wondrous.

I like how the in-game magazines perfectly capture the look of the magazines my dad always had around the house.

For a slightly younger crowd, there's also Tracks, which my kids have enjoyed: https://store.steampowered.com/app/657240/Tracks__The_Train_...

Model Railroads seems a rather common topic here, so surprised that this never got much attention here as I can see from searching.

Also very impressive considering that it looks to be the work of a single developer as well.

I tried this game out but had to return it - they keyboard and mouse controls are just too weird for me, and I don't have VR. It's a shame because I know this is the kind of game I could spend days in, and if I ever get VR it'll be the first game I buy.

I looked at this awhile ago and while I love the aesthetic it kinda trended hard towards model railroad sim with stuff like needing to grab track out of a drawer and picking paints from another drawer. Thats just too much IMO.