Chris Sawyer's Locomotion

Chris Sawyer's Locomotion is a tile-based transportation management sim where you lay tracks, roads, and canals, then run vehicles over them to shift passengers and cargo between towns and industries. If you have ever stared at a tangled rail network in Transport Tycoon and felt genuine satisfaction when the throughput numbers clicked, this is the direct spiritual successor from the same programmer. You control everything from the initial route layout to vehicle replacement cycles, and the map evolves around you as towns grow or shrink depending on how well you serve them. The core loop is about reading the map, identifying which industries feed which, and building efficient chains before your AI rivals lock you out of profitable corridors. That competitive AI is worth calling out specifically: Locomotion's opponents are aggressive and will snake routes across your territory if you leave gaps. This is not a sandbox where you build pretty networks at leisure. Station placement, vehicle capacity, and load balancing all have real consequences on your income, and a poorly timed fleet expansion can crater your finances fast. Experienced players will recognize the importance of seeding early bus routes on short hops to generate cash flow before committing to expensive rail infrastructure. For newcomers, the learning curve is real but manageable if you approach it methodically. Start on the smaller maps, pick a single cargo chain (say, coal to a power station), get that loop profitable, then expand outward. The UI is dated by any modern standard, and the tutorial does not hold your hand through every system, but the underlying logic is consistent enough that an hour of experimentation teaches you more than any manual. Locomotion is not OpenTTD with its massive mod library and community patches, but it is a tighter, more authored experience with distinct scenario goals that give each session a clear shape. On the negative side, the interface has not aged gracefully. Rotating and placing complex junctions involves a lot of trial-and-error clicks, and there is no undo button for laid track, which means a misclick costs you real money mid-game. The mod ecosystem on Steam is sparse compared to the open-source alternatives in the genre. Multiplayer is absent, so this is a solo experience front to back. If you are coming from something like OpenTTD with all its quality-of-life patches, some of Locomotion's friction will feel deliberate and some will just feel old. What keeps the 87 percent positive score credible is that the fundamental decision-making is genuinely interesting across a full playthrough. Choosing between road vehicles, trams, trains, ships, and aircraft involves real trade-offs in speed, capacity, and infrastructure cost. Late-game scenarios where multiple transport modes need to interlock are satisfying in a way that rewards the player who planned the network instead of improvising. If you want a pure, numbers-driven transport sim with some bite to it and no live-service strings attached, Locomotion still delivers that loop cleanly. Diego, Scout Team