Recent reviews by JegoMyEggo

If you want to play the "online" part of Railroads: Online!, you're boned. I think too many people ignore the fact that the dev abandoned American Railroads to make this game multiplayer, and has failed abysmally. There are no basic multiplayer features like text/voice chat, kick/ban perms, build/delete perms, or dedicated servers. Client players are subjected to weird animation bugs and a render distance of ~200ft. That comes out to about 10 railcars, just 10, a train any longer and clients can't see it, let alone someone else on the track. This doesn't even touch on the fact that client's trains "popcorn" and "rubberband" no matter how good the host internet and hardware is. Meanwhile the host is reduced to a 10fps slide show once more than 3 people are running trains, their PC on it's knees with demands. We spent 7 months waiting for a fix that people who knew more than Keume told him wouldn't fix these issues, and offered better solutions. Lo and behold he has finally abandoned the spline update, and left us in the same network/multiplayer hell.

Lets say you only want single player though. You are still treated to a performance nightmare once you've made any progress on the map, and the single most tedious gameplay element I've ever encountered: cranes. The community has almost resigned themselves to this reality, but let me lay it bare for you: you will spend 20+ loading a train with one click at a time, and nothing else to do, just to run it 5 minutes through lag and random derails, to do it again. The time sink to just run trains is nauseating. Why is it like this? Because the developer does not play test his own game. There are a lot of things that bother me about Keume, he's lazy (always the easiest fix, not the best fix), he relies on others to build his game (most assets are from devs that he drove away, and new ones will not be coming), he doesn't collaborate (many modelers could've implemented their own work, but he refused to give access to a GitHub, and would not accept new ideas), he's petty (removed a former members beloved soundtrack because their departure from the team was mourned), and he seems to lack necessary skills (botched implementation of models, poor netcode, poor optimization, slow progress, massive rewrites to code) but most of all, he has no idea what is and isn't fun/working in his own game! It took 9 months of complaining to get him to make switches place from different directions. It was probably an hour of work from him. He didn't know he broke how industries work until after the update went out, because he doesn't play! This will remain a huge roadblock to player enjoyment until he actually sits down and plays for a couple hours.

And none of this really touches the depths to which the developer has actively sabotaged this game's potential, momentum, and vision. I have never personally watched so much talent, effort, and work be squandered like this. Keume, if you're reading this please know that no matter how much inching progress you make by yourself over the next years, this game will never reach the potential it had, it may become a good game, but it will never be a great game.

To sum it up, I have gotten so much fun from this game, but I would advise watching this circus from a distance until the show is figured out. Several performances have been duds, and the ringleader now works alone, if he pulls through, good for him, until you see proof of that, steer clear. Check out Railroader or Highball! (some former R:O! devs with serious talent over there) for now.