Rule the Rail Demo

Model trains are an interesting and rather costly hobby, not to mention the fact that it requires a lot of spare time. In essence, the most dedicated enthusiasts also build their own miniature villages and cities, in order to make the trains look more realistic. However, that is certainly not an option for someone with not a lot of spare time, so computers come to the rescue yet again.

Rule the Rail is everything you might want if you are a model train enthusiast, because it contains all the necessary tools you might need in order to recreate your paradise on the computer. In fact, the game is much more like an editor, given the fact that a lot more time is spent trying to come up with map layouts and landscapes than seeing the trains moving across them.

In essence, there are a few pre-created maps as well, in case you want to jump straight into business and try to get a grip on the actual trains. If you decide to take it from scratch, however, a completely flat and empty map is provided to you, which can be edited, transformed, and designed in any way you can imagine, using the available tools.

Speaking of which, you can edit and basically everything there is, using the appropriate instrument from the available toolbox. You can raise or lower the ground, in order to obtain lakes and mountains, paint new textures onto the map to create different zones, as well as place buildings, stations, and a variety of other objects all around the environment.

In order to render all this, the game uses a pretty nice graphics engine, or at least it was back when it was first released. It may not look like much now, but the trains and the objects you can scatter around the map are quite detailed, even if they lack proper shading and the shadows are way too jagged. Hopefully, you’ll be way too distracted by the trains to notice the visual quality most of the time, however.

When it’s all said and done, the most valuable thing offered by Rule the Rail is flexibility. You can create any kind of map and let your imagination run wild, as long as you are having fun. There are plenty of layouts and maps created by the community, in case you want to try something different for a change.