Train sim created by just one person is being called the best ever made

I always wonder how a solo developer can source high quality assets like these, plus develop a full game with them. In this case did the dev create the assets or did they purchase them from a freelancer? How much would purchasing this many assets cost?

Game looks amazing from a solo dev but this article is terrible, like the journo didn't even play the game they just watched the game.

> including support for the Zuiki MASCON, a bespoke peripheral for train driving sims.

This just makes me feel so glad to be alive today!

I have almost no appreciation for trains and I’m incredibly interested in trying this.

The game in question is https://store.steampowered.com/app/4630570/RUNNING_TRAIN/

This is a 1 person job?! It looks practically photorealistic. That's absolutely wild.

Looks beautiful and I am filled with an instant sense of nostalgia looking at the screenshots.

Personally if I were going to adopt a nerdy train hobby, I would tend more toward train photography. Recently train photographers have been in the news for mostly bad reasons [1], but I have also seen train photographers setting up in rural locations and the scenery looks stunning and also totally chill. The problems arise when people gather en masse to get the "iconic" shots that have been probably been photographed a million times before.

Or just go out and actually ride a bunch of different routes. It's been a long time since I've done it, but just riding a local or express train through a scenic area is delightful.

Of course there's no reason that true train afficianados can't do all of the above, as well as building model trains!

[1] https://petapixel.com/2025/12/15/japanese-railway-pleads-wit...

Another notable, if old, train simulator from Japan is OpenBVE. It was easy to model railroads on it. Many short Brazilian routes were/are modeled in OpenBVE. It is particularly convincing since it simulates well the typical lateral wobbling that metric trains are known for.

I never got the appeal for these sim games. From the screenshots, it looks like a beautiful game and I guess I could enjoy the visuals for an hour or 2.

But I don't see how it'd entertain me for hours on end. If someone here is into these sim games, what's the reason you keep going back to them?

I wonder if it's got VR. There's not many train Sims that do even though the sim community in general has really embraced VR.

"Played properly, Running Train asks you to carefully control your speed, braking, and prompt, safe arrival at train stations, and rewards or penalizes you accordingly"

So it's basically a clone of 'Densha de go!' series.

I read the title and assumed this was going to be about Transport Tycoon.

Windows only? :-(

It’s beautiful. I wonder how much an LLM was involved if at all.

>And oh my goodness, it’s so pretty.

Am I the only one that thinks the word "pretty" is overused to describe the visual quality and artistry of games? I see this word thrown around often and it feels so low-effort.