Sweet Transit Review – I Just Like Trains, Okay?

After almost 2 years, here is our Sweet Transit Review which just left early access. Is this logistics-oriented city-builder worth your time? Find out here.

If you're really into Factorio, stop reading this and go buy Sweet Transit. If you're really into seeing numbers grow and making those numbers grow faster, you should also buy Sweet Transit. In short, I liked this one but as I mentioned in my Early Access Preview almost 2 years ago, this is a very “made for me” kind of game.

So what has changed in 2 years of Early Access and are the trains still cool? We're getting into it in great detail right here in our review.

*Review Copy was provided by the Publisher and played on PC.*

Sweet Transit Review – Addicted to the Numbers

If you haven't heard of Sweet Transit yet, let me give you the elevator pitch. Imagine a city builder by the ways of SimCity or Cities Skylines but with its entire focus on transportation.

Come to think of it, this game is just Factorio without the harrowing premise of bleeding a foreign world dry of its resources and displacing its native inhabitants. This should come as no surprise as one of the Factorio developers is one of the leading forces behind this game.

Wrapped in charming early industrial-era aesthetics Sweet Transit is a game about transportation and production. Or as I came to think about it, the good bits of Factorio. The main difference is a more laid-back pace that lets you focus on creating a well-oiled industrial machine rather than fixing leaks and trying to avoid incoming disasters.

But let's start from the top. Sweet Transit has you generate a gigantic map and asks you to milk all the value out of every single square inch. Pretty easy right? What starts pretty simple with your usual city-building shenanigans soon escalates into integrating supply lines and optimizing throughput.

There is an excellent series of tutorials and challenges that'll ease you into the very basics of transportation. Later on, as you have to manage tens, eventually hundreds of trains at the same time, things become more complicated. Having laid out rails and infrastructure with some amount of foresight pays of huge several hours into a savestate.

Progression on the other side is very linear. This is fine, you don't need any complex strategies to progress, a lot of Sweet Transit's charm is it mounting more and more resources for you to manage and process while keeping your operation as smooth as possible.

The stars here are the trains which are not just rails and metal boxes you plot down, but complicated little machinery you have to plan, build, and program to get the most out of every single trip.

If you don't like trains or dialing the numbers to perfection, I doubt you'll find any satisfaction here. This is a very specific kind of game and is more like a modern, more approachable take on Open Transport Tycoon Deluxe.

Visually, the game is a simple but detailed feast with beautiful buildings, environments, and especially trains. Sometimes you just want to zoom in a little, sit back in your chair, and watch all the bustle going on as your trains drive in and out of stations and workers cease the means of production.

The soundtrack deserves special mention for being full of charming, comforting bobs that make the hours just fly by as you build out your railway empire. And time flies by indeed as I have 15+ hours in my current save file and am writing this at 3 AM on the day of this review's embargo.

Sweet Transit – 8.5/10

As you can hopefully tell, there is not much I can complain about with Sweet Transit. It's a game that can and will easily consume my life the same way its spiritual predecessor has. But as of writing, Sweet Transit is still very basic. This doesn't mean it is bad, it being a laid-back city/factory builder is a feature

With mod support and a working workshop, replayability is guaranteed once some of my fellow sickos come up with even more busy work for you to keep up with. So now excuse me I have to fix my railroads again.

Sweet Transit is available on PC on both Steam and the Epic Game Store.

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