Little Kitty, Big City
Little Kitty, Big City
Game
Game2026
Steel Artery: Train City Builder
Developer SoulAge23
Hardcore city-building sim in a fantasy steampunk world. Manage multi-racial colonies with hundreds of autonomous citizens, balance their needs, grow the economy, build logistics, and travel a vast world carrying out the Emperor’s orders. From the Steam store page
197 reactions from 4 sources (Steam reviews, Bluesky, Lemmy, Mastodon) · newest Oct 5, 2026 · last updated Oct 8, 2026 · How this works
Audience score
74
Fresh
140 positive · 48 negative
95% range 68–80%
| Source | + | − | = |
|---|---|---|---|
| Steam reviews | 140 | 48 | 0 |
| Bluesky * | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Lemmy * | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Mastodon * | 0 | 0 | 0 |
* shown, not counted in the score (label accuracy below our 85% bar or not yet audited).
9 newer reactions are still waiting for a label.
Steam's own rating
Mostly Positive
229 of 323 reviews positive (all languages, per Valve)
What people are saying
Summary pending — the reactions are listed below.
Reactions
60 of 197 · most liked firstNot a casual game. This is the kind of management sim where one bad decision quietly turns into twelve new problems an hour later. I mean that as praise.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Cool premise and a promising start, but the overall economy feels like it was balanced at random, and the player is given very few ways to actually address these problems until very, very, very late into the game. This lack of care extends to much of the game. Basic construction needs require plates and parts, for example, which require quite a bit of research to unlock. You can soft-lock yourself in the tutorial because the game is so stingy on the amount of parts it gives you. Things that…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I want to preface this review by saying that I'm really more neutral on the game's current quality, but I'm leaning towards negative due to a number of flaws I have with it. Overall, I really love the game's concept and I think that it can even be pretty fun in its current state. But there's also a lot of pain points that make me struggle to enjoy it for very long. For example, it's possible to literally fail the tutorial lol. A lot of buildings that produce certain materials, require…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I didn't see any "Early Access" page, so I thought this game was done. It is currently not very playable. Balancing is not very good, especially in the early game. Completing the first quests yield no reward, and you apparently need to get halfway through the tech tree before leaving the starting area. I kept running out of "Iron parts" while trying to build the infrastructure necessary to make them: Mines, Smeltery, Forges. A more balanced game would ensure your base input resources allow…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Steel Artery: Train City Builder, a steampunk fantasy city builder where you manage multiracial colonies with thousands of autonomous citizens, balance their needs, manage the economy, and create logi. [Steel Artery - Official Launch Trailer](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iznm3GMcCBE) Screenshots  …
unlabelledView post →Great concept, but very rough, un-polished. Resourse distribution along the rail lines make this really hard to fully enjoy. Volumn controls dont quite work. Transitioning between tier 1 and 2 is sloppy to the point of impossible. I look forward to what this game will be, with a bit of effort; but for now i cant recommend it.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I like this game a lot, but I can also see why some people will bounce off it. Pros: Great concept Solid simulation depth Autonomous citizens feel believable Nice art style Unique atmosphere Cons: UI can be rough Learning curve is steep Some systems could use clearer explanations Mistakes can spiral hard Overall: worth it if you enjoy complex management sims.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →The concept is good and I could see how this could be fun, but at this point in time, the game still needs more work. Specifically, the carrier logic. By the time you get to the 90 minute refund window, you are just getting started and before you know it, you figure out that the game is a bit broken at this stage. I like these kind of games. I think it is a bit unneccessarily complicated but I do like it once figured out how to get started. It is extremely easy to get softlocked by not having…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →First of all, the game has a really good concept and art style, and I hope it will improve over time. However, for now, I have to leave a negative review. There are many basic features missing that other games in this genre already have. For example, there is no way [To my knowledge] to lock certain work slots or automatically remove workers from buildings that no longer have access to resources (such as miners assigned to a tile with no ore left). Another issue is the very strict…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →This game is a bizarre allegory for real life (not in a good way) I really wanted to like this game, and for the 1st few hours it seemed to be ok, It did feel like the tutorial was rushing me a bit towards an arbitrary goal, and since the rest of the tech tree was locked behind that goal presumably, and I could see I was starting to run low on starting resources I played along. I notice I'm starting to run low on plates and I need the "pressing" research to build the workshop that produces…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →This game feels like the developers made the game for people to lose on purpose, rather than making a difficult survival city building game that is just fun to play. The problems start as early as the tutorial. The tutorial forces you to place objects in certain locations, and you know you'll just have to move them later, which you can't really do easily. The game punishes you for trying things, and does not reward you in any meaningful way. The balance in the game is atrocious, and it is…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →hmm, for now, i really can't recommend anyone buying this game, even if it doesn't cost much, i don't need a long write up, i just need to lay out its issues, i'll write everything here for you to read and judge if this can serve as your reference. ==================== the biggest flaw of this game right now is the overly unrestrained total free will and weird unregulated movement logic of the ai, if an ai is supposed to travel from point a to point b for work every day, the normal logic is…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Game feels incomplete on top of other issues. It's a train related oregon trail. Need coal? Stop to get it and run out of water, soon everyone is dead. The pay off of a completed run is lackluster. There are no upgrades as the game itself suggest such as tier one cabins, that's it, all cabins are crap. No special unlocks i've yet to find. Crappy toilets may suggest you eventually get a bidet, nope. Artwork show machine gun turrets and warfare, not getting that here. This game at best is an…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Steel Artery: Train City Builder, a steampunk fantasy city builder where you manage multiracial colonies with thousands of autonomous citizens, balance their needs, manage the economy, and create logi. [Steel Artery - Official Launch Trailer](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iznm3GMcCBE) Screenshots  …
unlabelledView post →Even though it says 1.0 the game is still in early access. There are a lot of bugs and key systems like logistics and storage often break with your peons getting stuck loading or unloading something. Once you get a large train you spend a lot of your time fixing broken buildings and stuck peons. It has a solid premise but needs a few more years of development.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →My experience: Built food production ✅ Invited a few orcs to join the colony ✅ Realized that it was a mistake ✅ Economy exploded ✅ Everyone is unhappy ✅ Started new run immediately ✅
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Too many ways to soft-lock the save. I really want to like this game but it needs another 3-6 months in the oven before I'd reccomend it. Lots of QoL fixes are needed.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I played for like an hour until giving up I don't recommend it, it was really fun initially but afterwards it's just kind of terrible resource management and (for me at least) realising you didn't progress how the game wanted you to and that you have to basically restart and manage your train perfectly to make any more real progress, and while doing all that you still have to manage really annoying resources. Like, dirty water. It is incredibly easy to get way too much really fast, and you…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Don't listen to the Negative Nellies, the game is fun and challenging and offers a few fresh or at least rare takes on the city/colony management genre. The citizens are totally autonomous and you cannot control them directly. Unlike most management games you are actually a manager, not a god that can instantly tell everyone what to do. Rather, it simulates something close to an actual market economy - people work for wages and pay for services. You build the supply chains and decide on…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I saw the dev's apology to the community. But I can't recommend a game that should be in early access but released anyway. The UI is as bare bones as you can get in this type of game. It's a shame to see the lovely pixel art ruined by the awful UI. The tutorial feels half made. Once you get to the more interesting parts the game just gives you a laundry list of things to build without further explanation. If this game is supposed to be difficult, as in like Frost Punk or Dwarf Fortress, then…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I can see what Steel Artery is trying to be but I don't think it's ready for release yet. I like the idea of a complex, unforgiving city builder on a train. I've always liked stories about massive mobile - often dystopian - cities. I cannot recommend Steel Artery, as a management sim the UI needs an overhaul. The graphics are great, you can see that in the screenshots but the interface and tutorial... not so much. I sat for a bit thinking if I should write this review for the developer and…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →The game is a lot of fun! there are some bugs and issues but the developer is very active in discussions and is actively patching the game.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →This game has Dwarf Fortress energy. It's still rough around the edges, but the dev is active and committed to sanding them down. It's fun as-is, if a little janky, and I think it has tremendous potential.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →The best part of this game is that your citizens feel like actual idiots. The worst part is realizing they’re usually reacting to your own bad decisions.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Great game if you enjoy solving problems you personally created 15 minutes earlier.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Please make village/town art, stopping in a city to find it's just an empty land graphic is lame
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Not unfair, necessarily, but punishing if you expand too aggressively or misunderstand how systems interact.I actually appreciate that.Too many management games let you recover from terrible decisions too easily. Here, poor planning has consequences. That said, a few quality-of-life improvements would go a long way.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →So far so good! I'm really interested in the premise here, and really enjoyed Majesty so the idea of semi-autonomous crew is neat. Will update review as I go along but I think this deserves a bit of visibility!
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →It's a cool concept, but it's just not ready yet. The game is meant to be hard, but it currently lacks the balance required to make it bearable as a challenging experience. Logistics is the entire game and there just aren't enough ways to manage it early enough to span the sudden gap in natural supply that you run into, more or less, directly after the tutorial ends and you leave the coast to accomplish your first quest which is to reach the first city you have access to, but that city also…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →The game looks promising but is unplayable. I can't get it to run more than 2 minutes before crashing.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →In its current state this game is just one big mess. 1. You are on a train but can't toss items out of a train. Just why? 2. Sizes of rooms force the "only true layout" of a train. I can understand mechanics that penalize bad layout decisions but can't understand why rooms with similar functionalities have different sizes (in both axes). 3. No trading, why? 4. Manager with micromanaging issues simulator—you can't set limits on stuff; you manually control what produces what. So if…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →UPDATE: Graphics: LOVE IT! Keep up the good work! Settings: The Settings Menu could use some tooltips, what is "Night Darkness"? Is 1 high or low? Same for "Camera Game Speed" and "Map Speed", a short explanation for each setting would be really helpful. Please also add keybindings for the Logistics Heatmap and Efficiency Heatmap! Suggestions: Fuel Planning: Would be great to plan routes for resource efficiency and gathering on the map, like planning for the train to stop then collect stuff…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Very fun management game! Enjoyed the demo and nice changes since then too. Feel like I just scratched the surface, but would recommend!
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Steel Artery is one of those games where the first time feel overwhelming, then suddenly something clicks and you start seeing the beauty in the chaos. The train-city concept is genuinely fresh. Expanding wagon by wagon while balancing housing, food, economy, and social tensions creates constant interesting pressure. UI definitely needs some cleanup. There’s a lot of information, and while most of it matters, it can be intimidating to parse. Still, if you enjoy deep strategy games, this is a…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →It need nore work , The Developer also promised to give more and intensively apologise for his early launch. but so far The game is good with environment and mecanics. Even though it need more work. It's still a worth it to buy. It's not buggy and npc actually work how it suppose to . The train also function accordingly. Here's my specifications where the dev should work: + Layers of train. like if the hight limit can be further extended in future game update. + Raids, as it a survival…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Thumbs up. I’m recommending Steel Artery because, in my opinion, the price and the amount of content already delivered feel fair. I’ve played quite a lot since launch, and I’m really enjoying it. The game scratches a very specific itch for me: city management mixed with the strange comfort of building a moving base on a train. There is something relaxing about always being on the move. It makes me feel like outside dangers would have a hard time reaching me. Of course, that does not mean…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Given the developer's response to the review, I purchased the game again and will try it again after updates. Modifications to my original review at italicized. I'll happily change the review to positive if some of the bigger issues are successfully addressed. If this was an early access game, I would be recommending it albeit with a lot of caveats. However, since it's released I can't. It just needs too much work before it's really ready for most people to enjoy. I'll be refunding it now and…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Snowpiercer meets RimWorld meets a city builder and somehow it works.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Rigid to the point of being unfun. Lacking tons of QoL features that would make it more enjoyable, but in it's current state I regret buying it. The entire game is juggling resource management but the game doesn't give you finite control over many of the systems (some is added after way too much research). You can't set production limits, you can't really "pause" production, you can't furlough employees, it doesn't (by default) even tell you what resources are required before you start building…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Im on my 3rd play. Each time i get a little better, but you do have to build in a certain order, or you'll run out of resources quickly. Once you do, you're done. Start over. The tutorial does a poor job of explaining things and should be rewritten. There should be a better alert system when things are going awry. My last playthrough, everyone just suddenly died, and i dont know why. Ultimately, the game has potential, but it seriously needs a lot of work. I was really looking forward to this,…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →The demos today were awesome! - The Crushed in Time demo was very short, but I got a really good sense of the stretchy gameplay. - Steel Artery is an fun, elaborate city-builder on a train. - Esoteric Ebb is a D&D-inspired game where your 6 ability scores literally bicker inside your head.
unlabelledView post →Nice concept but something is just wrong with the way resources are manufactured and distributed. It feels slow, tedious and bugged. You wait forever and still resources are often not registered or not delivered to where they are needed. The only thing that works well is actually building structures. Needs a lot of work.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Upon taking a look at Steel Artery: Train City Builder (SA: TCB) it felt like looking at Project Highrise. Create space, build within the space, maximize efficiency as much as possible. The more hours that I put into the game showed a different route. One of the main reasons why I bought this game is because of trains, and I love trains. In short, the game is a city-building game that requires the player to properly plan routes in order to acquire resources to keep the train running…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →The game launched with some game breaking bugs but SoulAge23, the (only) developer (I believe,) fixed most of them with an extensive patch pretty quickly. This is an excellent platform for a colony builder.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →As many others stated, it's extremely easy to get soft-locked-to-death. I understand tough decisions and scarcity, but requiring me to understand the entire game supply chain to get out of the first hour of game and deadlock of finite, inter-dependent advanced starter resources, is not actually fun. I've tried three times, and at some point cannibalizing becomes more trouble than starting a new game. I'm not confident i'll get anywhere without trying three more minimum. That being said, i…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Hm, I love the concept but I have two major issues currently that annoy me to no end: - The UI is just not good, I am sorry. There are not only general design issues like no proper click feedback but it is also confusingly laid out. It reminds me a lot of old management style games like the original Sim City and not just because of the icons. - For some reason my guys just didn't seem to care about the engine. I had thousands of the required ressources but they filled it up only once in a full…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I came for “city builder on a train.”
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →To preface I really like this game, I think it is a great concept and really want it to succeed and can't wait to see updates moving forward. But there are some issues right now that need to be addressed to move forward. (which the dev already is working on) The game is really fun if you like logistical challenges and resource management. When I said challenge I meant it, this game in the beginning is hard you will reset your save probably more than once. The middle of the game is really fun…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →No This should be an early access, still needs some work. Cool concept and artstyle
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →great bones. good dev. i look forward to see everything that this game will become moving forward. def worth a play through.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →As the game stands today, I feel there is a fundamental disconnect to the developer vision and what is being sold. I am a player who was looking for a cozier style of game with challenge elements and a fairly linear tech tree. Oh I need Iron? Go to the iron area, get some, but stock food before going. As of now, there are too many ways and decisions that can be made that soft lock or death spiral you in this game. Its less of a management game, and more of a souls-like boss that you have to…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Could be very good game if developer pushes more content and game improvements
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I've decided to play more and really get a better understanding before I make a review of this game. I cannot recommend this game as of now, but maybe it's because I'm not understanding the gameplay fully yet. I'm back. Another reviewer said most of what I would've said though... So yeah I don't recommend this game atm. Another thing. If you watch the trailers on Steam after playing this game for a bit you'll realize that most of that stuff is impossible to achieve in the game. Kinda false…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →TL;DR: At its current stage, this game is complete garbage. Wait a while until everything gets fixed. For a colony sim/base-building game, the developers failed to make even the most basic logistics work properly. There’s no way to tell your workers to prioritize something, and no way to make them drop the useless task they’re doing for something more important. Two dead bodies lying on the deck and 50% of the people are terrified because of it? Nah, let me pick up these three pieces of dirt…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Game definitely should've launched in Early access, but is still worth a good few hours of play in its current state. Looking forward to future updates and patches
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I dont know what those positives are thinking. But this game is basically unplayable in the current stage due to logistic problems.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I really wanted to like Steel Artery. The concept is fun and pretty unique for a city builder. Building a train/city that travels through different biomes and collects different resources is a cool idea, and I’ve only seen a few games try something like this. Sadly, I can’t recommend it right now. The game has too many frustrating quality-of-life and progression issues. More than once, I got stuck because I needed a certain building to make an item, but that building also required the same item…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Great city builder
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →This game can be brutal.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →The engine runs out of dirty water with a warehouse full of dirty water directly adjacent to it, which cripples the game, lol.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →
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