Do you want trains? And stunning animation? And canine? And puzzles? And video video games? Of course you do, which is why you’re going to love Railbound as a lot as I did.

Released this week on PC, Mac, iOS and Android, Railbound is a puzzle sport that provides you a cute little prepare separated from its cute little carriages, and asks you to get everybody reunited as rapidly and cleanly as attainable. You, as a disembodied railway engineer, have to put a restricted variety of tracks in a method that not solely will get the carriages again to the prepare, however extra importantly will get them there so as.

Railbounds’ trailer explains what I’m speaking about:

This sport is fantastic. The puzzles are good and taxing, and ramp up in complexity at simply the fitting pace, however it’s the presentation that units it aside. The trains don’t simply transfer, they lurch. You don’t simply put tracks down, they pop on touchdown. Everything is cute and enjoyable and has an actual sense of tangibility to it, as if we have been messing with a board sport, or a chunky kids’s toy.

There are over 150 levels to get by way of, most introduced like a linear marketing campaign however some current as unlockable alternate options to those. And it’s the timing component to the puzzles that makes the distinction right here; merely getting the carriages attached is commonly no large deal, however getting them linked in the fitting sequence could be a nightmare, requiring all types of trial and error.

Luckily issues by no means get really irritating; it’s really easy to return a step or restart a puzzle, and all the pieces is so vibrant and cheery and playful—helped by its laid-back soundtrack—that you would be able to spend an age getting all the pieces improper however nonetheless feeling nothing however pleasure.

While the sport is “out” this week, there’s additionally much more content material coming later in 2022, with the builders promising “new worlds with a brand-new mechanic” (semaphores) together with “accessibility fixes, including a colorblind mode”.