There is no abundance of train sims in this world, that’s for sure. But I am a person that likes two cakes, so you won’t find me complaining when a new one rocks up. Today, that new one is Running Train, a quite lush looking train sim that places a big emphasis on looking as realistic as possible, set in tourist’s and gaming’s current favourite destination, Japan.
Specifically, it’s releasing into early access, meaning it obviously won’t have all of the features you might want your train sim to have. For starters, you’ll notice that the world has a bit of ghostly vibe to it. That’ll be down to the fact that there’s no passengers for you to pick up just yet, but in an FAQ solo developer Novatetsu Games that this will only be the case for now. There are plans to add both passengers and a system to pick them up, it just wasn’t quite ready for release, and should be out by the end of the year. A couple more lines will also be added too, as well as a conductor mode, all planned for by Q3 2027.
What you can currently do is, of course, drive your trains across two fictional railways operators, with four train types to choose from. You can also play on dedicated controllers, for those who really like to live out their train driving dreams. There’s two weather options to choose from currently too, winter and spring, though I imagine most of you will want to see those pink cherry blossoms. And there’s a photo mode too, a fitting inclusion for such a game.
I make no secret of generally not being particularly charmed by games that opt for realistic graphics, though truthfully this comes from a place of being frustrated by the lack of purposefulness in aiming to look realistic. Sim games are one of the few places I do understand the use of realism, and it does look quite lovely here. Enough so that I imagine you could trick a few people into thinking it’s just straight up live action footage.
Running Train is available in early access on Steam now.
