If you ever wanted to shape your own railway dreams, now you can with Toy Trains.
At the beginning of the movie “The Fabelmans”, a young man who would eventually become Steven Spielberg was so surprised when he saw a scene where a train crashed into a car and that changed his perspective forever. Long story short, his family buys him a toy train kit to try to recreate said stunt and, at the same time, free his wildest ideas with such equipment. Toy Trains VR fulfills that lifelong dream of many of us, which, due to lack of space, time, or money never got around to.
Developed by Something Random, a Polish team that also created the acclaimed, mind-bending Superhot VR due to its innovative mechanics, comes Toy Trains. As you might expect, the premise of this one is easy to guess. The magic of virtual reality has given us the possibility to go to space, be a gunslinger, and climb mountains. Yet, the mundane delight of having your room to build toy trains could, at a certain moment, sound even more enticing than the previously mentioned propositions.
The light narrative takes no time to set up your current situation. You are a bored youngster with an overactive imagination ready to play in your attic. Your parents have left for a work trip, and you are left to your own devices and plenty of time to proudly build something worthy of your ingenuity. As any lonely child can attest to, there are even little toys that talk to you and guide you through the onboarding process of Toy Trains.
Staring at the front of a table and a bunch of old boxes, your eye catches a forgotten toy train kit among the rubble, and the game is on. You cannot physically move in Toy Trains, but you can use your virtual hands to interact with objects around you. Fundamentally a puzzle game, Toy Trains mainly consists of building train tracks along a set layout in which you have to link houses along the railway to a predetermined important building, be it an airport or a city hall. That’s it, no big bad, no enemies out to get you. Just the train tracks and your creative flow.
And it is more than enough to get your inner child giddy once it’s up and running. As you progress, more train tracks are unlocked to come up with even greater rail track ideas alongside each level to take advantage of these kits and your vision. For each new layout, there is an initial tutorial explaining how a new part works. Some of them include bridges, slopes, and tunnels of various lengths that you take manually from a booklet that will be handy for the length of your journey as you entertain your free time in your parents’ absence.
While the purpose of each level is to connect each house in the area to a construction site that increases in difficulty the more you solve, the key goal is to exercise your mind with all the tools at your disposal. As there is not just one direct answer to each puzzle presented, it is up to your perceptiveness to look at the board from a unique angle and find the solution with the help of each part singularly arranged.
Once you finish a challenge, you can decorate the scenery and customize the board to your liking. As there are also endless possibilities to correctly complete the board and no limit to the parts you can use, it is possible to also rearrange the tracks and see the different ways you could have solved it differently.
Considering the infinite answers for each open-ended challenge, this can also mean frustration in progressing along properly. Your guiding toy friend can offer you a bit of help in some cases, with a small question mark next to his head to nudge you in the right direction, such as a house you could have missed to connect back to the construction site when all others are linked as they should.
Just like any inquisitive young mind who wants to grab anything in their view, you too can grab most things in Toy Trains, even if it does not complete the level or advance the plot. This is crucial to remind you of the perspective your character is looking at things. Yes, he is passing the time making these intricate layouts and conversing with toys about their imaginary lives, but he also is endlessly interested in the world around him. Being able to pick up with every plane, train, and automobile within your scope is a constant reminder to engage with the world.
Before starting every new layout, your confidant and miniature toy friend reads a new letter from your parents, giving a glimpse of their long-winded trip and their relationship to your character. Although there is not a huge emphasis on a deep narrative, the subtle storytelling in each of these writings is enough to show an earnest attempt at a meaningful connection.
Eventually, some of your main character’s thoughts and worries leak out into your conversations with your imaginary toy friends and reflect what he’s thinking at the moment. While the storyline is drip-fed and a vehicle to pass the time with your creations, it certainly works well in between your dreams of becoming a train engineer that seem more likely with each railway proudly built.
The soundtrack of Toy Trains is one that, if you are not careful, you will surely spend hours listening to. Depending on the level, the mixture of mellow guitar strings and soothing keyboard sounds provide the perfect setting to concentrate specifically on building your train sets at your leisure. The approachable demeanor of it all continues with the music to excel in creating your best railways.
The board where you work is charmingly detailed as well. You can touch the water, so to speak, blow out a cloud with your hands, and even if you physically approach your construction or the river with your headset, you can hear the people working or the water flowing more loudly. The sound design in this aspect can be easily missed, but the fact that they went above and beyond to make it so shows care in its development.
As a young child fascinated with miniature toys such as Micro Machines, having this interactive playground at my disposal seems like a perfect fit and not something a video game wish fulfillment thought possible. What Toy Trains achieves in its compact but wondrous package is a joy in and of itself. To let your creativity run free within its constraints is something that, even if you are not imaginative, will satisfy needs you might as well not even think you were looking for.
Whether you are accomplishing a lifelong dream of playing with a train kit or are lucky enough to have a dedicated space and would just try the novel new VR game in the store, Toy Trains goes beyond what a usual offering of virtual reality does in that not only does it recreate a fun mechanic to try but in that, it also adds an original spin to establish itself as a PSVR2 title to spend a quiet afternoon in and make it a memorable one.
