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Game
Game2018
Railway Empire
Developer Gaming Minds Studios
Railway Empire is a railroad construction and management simulation game developed by Gaming Minds Studio and published by Kalypso Media. It was announced in early 2017 and released on 26 January 2018 for Linux and Microsoft Windows, 30 January 2018 for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, and 14 February 2020 for Nintendo Switch. In Japan, the physical copy of the game was distributed by Ubisoft in May 2018. A sequel,… From Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)
192 reactions from 3 sources (Steam reviews, Bluesky, Mastodon) · newest Oct 4, 2026 · last updated Oct 7, 2026 · How this works
Audience score
72
Fresh
113 positive · 45 negative
95% range 64–78%
| Source | + | − | = |
|---|---|---|---|
| Steam reviews | 113 | 45 | 0 |
| Bluesky * | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Mastodon * | 0 | 0 | 0 |
* shown, not counted in the score (label accuracy below our 85% bar or not yet audited).
34 newer reactions are still waiting for a label.
Steam's own rating
Very Positive
8,054 of 9,743 reviews positive (all languages, per Valve)
What people are saying
Summary pending — the reactions are listed below.
Reactions
60 of 192 · most liked firstI had no idea how fun it would be to plan railway networks and manage the economies of different cities and farms. There’s a really engaging and satisfying game at the core. But ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, the UI/UX is some of the worst I’ve ever experienced. Every simple thing feel unnecessarily confusing. It genuinely feels like multiple teams designed different parts of the interface without ever communicating with each other. I really want to keep playing, but interacting with the game is just painful.…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Kalypso games really never get past that sorta 80% effort level, do they. Tried a bit of Railway Empire 2 and it sorta works but so much is just kinda half assed. Laying track is unintuitive and unpleasant.... in a railway game. Crazy
unlabelledView post →While I like this game I couldn't recommend it to someone who just wants a fun game to play. At first, the game is fine, developing rail networks and feeding supplies to cities, etc. The problem is though, is that in order to survive against the AI, which, cannot be decreased in strength, you must assemble a spaghetti mess of tracks and trains in order to pump cities with a ♥♥♥♥ ton of mail and passengers. Otherwise, you will not be able to break even with most of the AI in terms of monetary…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Free Play Days: Game Pass members can play Totally Reliable Delivery Service, Sword Art Online Fractured Daydream and Railway Empire for free this weekend, while all Xbox players can enjoy Terra Memoria and For Honor, no membership needed. news.xbox.com/en-us/2025/0...
unlabelledView post →I'd rate this game a 3.5/10 on the surface level it's great, detailed trains from various time periods that you can ride on and the early game of hauling cargo and passengers from city to city is fun.. but the shine wears off later in the game when you have to build byzantine spaghetti junctions of railways to supply cities that consume goods faster than a black hole whilst dealing with annoying AI. but the deal-breaker in this game for me is that if you don't supply cities with enough cargo…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Very high production budget for visuals and sound, very poor execution on the technical side of things in terms of UI/UX, functionality, track placement and gameplay.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I thought this would be a more modern, updated version of the Railway Tycoon games. It's not. The Railway Tycoon games make more sense from an economic standpoint.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Certainly not completely bad but falls a bit short of its price. It is a very lovingly crafted gallery of trains but it's just not that great a game... It get's boring and overwhelming with the number of trains to manage. The UI is hectic and confusing (good luck remembering whether the Escape key will go back or open the main menu - it varies...). The cartoonish competitors and employees are out of sync with the realistic representation of everything else. Cash is rolling in no matter what,…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →For a genre and industry obsessed with time, can anyone explain why it takes 30 in game days to travel from Cheyenne to Rock springs on a straight line with no stops? Locking the game behind a long tutorial scenario in which the game does not tell you vital game mechanics is bad. Not letting you move on to other scenarios until you beat it is worse. Failing to tell you there is a time limit to the scenario is wrong. Voiced characters are loud and obnoxious too. Game does a lot to keep you…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Well I bought it for less than 10 Euros. The version with all dlcs. The campaign was nice and normal what the difficulty concern. After that you play scenarios (the dlcs) which are very very very difficult. There is no setting and when you set the normal setting (without signals) it seems for me as if the game is glitching and the trains are waiting at the stations for ever without loading anything. I did not knew at the time that there was a Railway Empire 2 game. If you dont have any of them…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Fighting controls and trying to work out illogical tracklaying isn't my idea of fun
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →In my humble opinion, this is the better Railway Empire game; while the 2nd streamlines a lot, it takes away the fun in the management and complexity. The 1st one is also WAY cheaper, and so engaging, and still looks great for today's standards! Top game! Get it if you like trains, or had fun with Factorio's trains
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Now accepting friend applications #promosky - Photography - Atlus games - RPGs - Cosmere - The Mistborn TTRPG - 3D printing - Programming - Game Development - Space - Railway Empire Liking or following means you should DM me and say hi because I like meeting new friends 👉👈
unlabelledView post →There are different techniques that can be developed to play this game, which causes me to use my thinking ability to come up with the best way to play the game. After many hours spent I am still developing different approaches. The best I have done so far is Railroad Engineer which is still aways from President.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →This game is quite bad, not good enough to be enjoyable. It could have been great but fail in many aspect. The user interface is extremely bad and require a lot of extra clicks to perform simlple action. The developer thought it was a good idea to lock PAUSING the game behind a game option that reduce your score at the end of the game. Do you have someone at your door or something urgent to do in real life? Tough luck, you better enter build mode or the menu to pause the game. Do you need…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I finished everything that could be done, got all the achievements, and in the end, I feel like someone who has finished tedious work, household chores and lost pleasure halfway. Masochist. Yes. But when you like to finish a job, you're always masochistic in a way... The logistical issue makes no sense, especially for a logistician like me. Transport costs (distance, travel difficulties, supply/demand, availability of means of transport, etc.) are not really taken into account. It is a flat…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I tried. Over and over. I just don't like the balance of it. I feel like each touch can HUGE changes. The cost to build rain can be adjusted wildly by moving the track a few feet one way or the other. Want to make a cool big circle. HUGE cost. Want a mess of lines with no organazation, cheaper to build. You can't make a true system of rails unless your in sandbox.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Not going to lie- the clunky, complicated UI and the poor explanations surrounding what SHOULD be simple tasks/clicks is problem enough. Being penalized for daring to want to PAUSE while not knowing what to do is like a cherry on the turd. The fact that the "advisors" you can play as all have various jabs to insult you while you're trying to figure things out had me hitting the refund button faster than a Pinkerton could kill a hardworking kid in coal mine.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Worst tutorial I've seen in a game, especially one this complicated. When I googled how to do a basic task that the tutorial explained poorly, the devs literally replied to someone asking the same question with: Go watch this hour long YouTube video made by a fan of the game. All I want is a relaxing train management game where I get to watch cool trains do their job. This game doesn't even have a follow cam. What kind of train game doesn't have a follow cam? It's like the trains don't even…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Fun tip. Start each mission by surrounding the AIs station with tracks and block them from expanding
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Like model trains, but slightly less time consuming, and a lot less expensive.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →As far as I see it, the track management simply does not work. At least not in the Linux version of the game. Wondering if also other functionalities are unavailable. Too bad as the overall look and feel is ok.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I absolutely hate to buy DLCs just to get 100% Achievements.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →No Pause. No Fun. Not even a timer/clock to show how fast it is running. Trying to the learn the game. It took me years to build by first train.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →This game is very reminiscent of the original Railroad Tycoon. Where this version differs is in the ability to ride along the rails in the trains with multiple camera angles available, making it more immersive.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I like most things about this game, but the rail building (core of the game) is too finnicky - it's difficult to know when a switch will be created properly with parallel tracks, and it's often difficult to create crossovers. There is no blueprint system either, so you can't design much of your railway before building it. This compounds the above issue, making it not just annoying but also expensive. The track segment reservation system is odd as well. Trains will often become stuck trying to…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Either Railway Empire games (1 or 2) are the best railroad tycoon games out there. I love the relief lines helping setting tracks with minimum grade. It's not always easy to start playing railroad games: you either get overwhelmed with the endless tutorial or are left for dead and can't figure out where to start or what to do. The devs found a good balance between both options. Optional tutorials along the way make the learning curve smoother. If you find RE1 on sale, it's a good start. You…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Railway Empire offers a deep and engaging simulation experience for fans of strategy and railroad management. Set in the booming era of 19th-century America, the game puts players in charge of building and expanding a sprawling railway network from scratch. It combines city-building elements with economic strategy and logistics, challenging players to carefully plan routes, manage finances, and compete against rival companies. The game’s scope is impressive, allowing players to not only design…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →For a game about trains building the tracks is pretty clunky and tedious in comparison to other games with rails. The crew management mechanics feel just really annoying when you have more than a handful of trains, I'm not choosing 4 different people for every train when I have more than 30 trains. Also there's no concept of shared orders, wanna change what platform a train stops at? You'll have to do that for every train on that line manually. Wanna rework a small piece of the track? The…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Laying tracks in Railway Empire, an older RTS game I had in my library. #gaming #pcgaming
unlabelledView post →gets repetitive and boring, but, even so, better that most games that cost twice as much,. still would have been better off buying a bottle of tequila and just watching trains. ALSO, THIS GAME CAME OUT 0VE 30 YEARS AGO UNDER A DIFFERENT NAME... SO...... VERY. OUTDATED. GARBAGE.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Tried multiple times to beat the first Chapter tutorial. Even followed a YouTube guide move for move after 10 hours of trying. Guess they patched the game and made it impossible to beat. Feels like Eurojank and missing a lot of playtesting. Train AI does very stupid stuff, like waiting for a lane to be free at the destination on the other side of the map. Will update the review if future patches fix it. Not getting the sequel.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Clunky UI and miserable to manage. Took an embarassingly long time to even see the "buy train" button, I kept backing out of the menu. For some reason, the buy button is a slightly transparent dollar sign in the middle of screen. Still haven't found a 'clone/copy train line' button. All the facts you might want are obscured, making management in this train management game oxymoronic.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Great game. Doesn't hold your hand, which may make it frustrating until you learn how to build rails. DLCs are overpriced.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →It is quite beautiful, but has opted for the console friendly stupifications, and lacks variety in buildings and city developement. Apparently also if you connect a "level 6" to a rail network and start sourcing it resources, it can start diminishing into 5, 4, etc. Apparently the train supply network somehow can make things worse, if the demand goes up. I wonder how the level 6 city then supplied itself with wagons, if adding 20 trains going through it makes it so deprived of materiel. The…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I've been playing this game for many years, both on my Windows PC and my Xbox. It's one I leave for a few months then return to it again and then get hooked on it again for a few more months. I also own RE2 on PC but I prefer this version better, just used to it more I suppose.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I need a pc game to melt my brain with over the holidays. I want your recommendation. My most played games in order are: Satisfactory Fallout 4 7 Days to Die Railway Empire Rome Total War Stranded Deep No Mans Sky Farm Together Sekiro What's missing from this list please! #gaming #pcgaming
unlabelledView post →Someone needs to make an extremely in-depth Railroad Tycoon style simulation game. I've played Railway Empire but it's too surface level.
unlabelledView post →A word to the wise. The track laying sucks. It kills the game. The track laying in RE2 is fine. Go there.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Very bad hitboxes, intersections of raiways are really hard to build. Game would be really enjoyable without all those dowsides who make it really unfun when you realize you just lost your scenario because a monument hitbox is twice as large as the red square displayed, so you can't connect to a train station you built 3 hours ago. I've given this game many chances over several years, today was the last straw.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →If you had a train set when you were young, Play this on sandbox mode and just build your set.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →instructions in game are not very clear. Makes it too difficult to work out what you need to do or how to make money properly. Different options for moving across map would be much better. Quite poor and definitely would not pay full price for this or buy any of the extension
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Seemingly i dont have enought iq to make it run. 10/ 10 - brainf*ck with stucked trains.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Since Sid Meier's Railroad Tycoon, been wanting to play some games with such management style, grow the cities, grow the cash, buy-out competitions with just enough details to deal with. :)
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I bought this game and really enjoyed it, but I've tried running it today after a game update and it no longer runs. Disappointing. Technical support from both Steam and the game support offered no suggestions.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Railway Empire gives a lot of fun and is completely addictive. For me the only flaw is during a long-play: when you amass wealth, creating new routes becomes very repetitive and boring.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Do you like trains? How about slow strategy games about trains? No? Then skip this. If you do like slow strategy games (or trains) then this is not bad. Sequel is better but it kept me engaged enough. Boat loads of DLC all offer more of the same in reality. One massive annoyance; the competitors voice. Constance and unending taunts in the stunningly irritatingly voices. Multiples times I begged them to shut up and quickly turned the volume down on them. I played this on Steam Deck but hooked up…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I cannot say enough good things about this game. Singularly my favorite economy strategy game I have ever played. When I think back to all the challenges and achievements and DLC, nothing comes close to this game. If you grew up playing similar games, this one will NOT disappoint. Solid competitor for no 1 or 2 slot for my favorite game ever.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I want everyone to guess what game I bought that got GOG to suggest Railway Empire Soundtrack as a similar item
unlabelledView post →Bit late but here’s game 3️⃣ - Railway Empire on PS4, one that looked interesting but not had chance to have a go at yet #365xFalconGames25
unlabelledView post →Sim suggestions, depending on what types you like: Before We Leave Endless Sky Planet Zoo Banished Game Dev Tycoon Surviving Mars Railway Empire Do Not Feed The Monkeys
unlabelledView post →🎲 RANDOM GAME, Railway Empire 2 (Steam) https://store.steampowered.com/app/1644320 Take charge of a railway company in the early 1800s and turn steam engines into the workhorses of the economy. 🚂 Build a network of tracks, bridges... #SteamAndEpic #Construction #Railway #Steam #Multiplayer #RANDOM
unlabelledView post →Crash... crash.... crash.... its crash within in 1 minute sometime in 30 seconds
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Charming, simplistic, game. Not a detailed simulator, but a relaxing way to spend your time.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →becoase for just a map you need a DLC
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →i like the game. i wish it allows for more ai competitors.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Tonight's game set up. Railway Empire 2 on the PC, and the Blue Jays vs the Dodgers on the tablet. 😀
unlabelledView post →You like trains? You like economic/management sims? Then this game is for you
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →As a true fan of the Railroad Tycoon series (especially the 2nd instalment which stands as the true pioneer of the genre in my opinion), I can tell you that this is its worthy heir nowadays even though it has been developed by other designers and publishers. Relatively complex (higher difficulty settings) but entertaining game play, pleasant visuals and world design, nice campaigns. I definitely recommend it, and I would not go for the second instalment of the series. Not worthy.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I am not on the spectrum enough to enjoy this game
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →
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