Pocket Trains: Hands-On Video of NimbleBit's Newest Simulation Game

NimbleBit is following up Pocket Planes with perhaps the next-best transportation option: trains. Yes, Pocket Trains is now a real thing coming very soon, and fans of NimbleBit's simulation games should be at home here with a refreshed take on the Pocket Planes formula when it releases on September 26th.

This is another simulation game, very similar to Pocket Planes in that players must tote cargo around the world. But instead of flying around, they travel along rail lines. Players start on one continent and must earn money by delivering cargo to various destinations, building new rail lines to more cities, trying to become the head honcho among the world's railroad tycoons. Oh, and there's a giant underwater rail that goes from Europe to the United States in the Nimbleverse, apparently.

The game has become somewhat simplified versus Pocket Planes in two key ways: one, because trains only travel on rails, the trains can only travel on paths, and only the rails that they have claimed, so a particularly-colored track can only travel on those colored tracks. It makes managing where everything needs to go much simpler. Secondly, there's no negative costs incurred through travel anymore, though trains do break down and need repairing with coins or parts from time to time.

New train acquisition has been changed as well, with new parts collected through crates that need to be opened by spending bux. The crates contain random parts, with rarer special crates providing rarer parts. This is the kind of system that some developers could make incredibly IAP-driven, but bux and crates appear commonly enough while playing that they actually feel like a part of the game rather than just a monetization tool.

The bitizens don't play as much of a role in Pocket Trains: they're mostly just set dressing, and there's no customization of the conductors, yet. Still, they provide a flavor that makes the game feel quite familiar. As well, there's plenty of goofy-looking cargo: why not transport giant platforms of balloons or a giant cola bottle?

But overall, it will be interesting to see how well the simplified take on Pocket Planes goes over: it does feel a bit less stressful while still having some strategy in how rail lines should be laid out. The world will see when the game releases on September 26th.