Derail Valley Reviews

The game is a must get for any train lover, although I do fell lonely in the world sometimes, it does make you feel like you're a train driver. It's good in flat screen but if you you have a VR headset, you won't regret it, well, I didn't :)

Great game love just to just jump in a train and do some shunting or deliver cargo. maintain the train to keep them in good condition. steam is a lot of fun to, yes it is more challenge, but the reward you get after a heavy load is good. most of all the feeling you get when you are done is just fantastic.

This is easily the best train game I have played. The dev team keep updating and adding new content. Playing this in VR is a fantastic experience. It runs so well with no issues and the sense of realism is off the chart. Well done guys and thank you for creating this little masterpiece.

Found this game through Squirrel youtube channel (thank you youtube for the random recommendation) and it really caught my eye. Playing it currently in Non-VR mode but looking forward to try the VR version soon. Having a lot of fun in the first 4 hours. Was able to do some jobs and gather some licenses. Still playing with the starter locomotive. It really is just the beginning. The game is not hard to get into, the first locomotive is quite simple, and you get multiple options along the way, from simpler to more complex systems.

So far, worth the 40 bucks. Haven't done much of the career mode yet (gonna do that later) but I can confirm that it is a little easier to play in VR. (after messing around in sandbox) It has really nice details when it comes to the locomotives and I am overall excited to fully play the career mode and be able to operate more Trains. I will note that if you do wanna play this in VR, you might have to adjust some graphic settings.

i love how evrything works like from the horn to the speedo and there is wheelslip too and i love the derailing physics like the dirt and water intreacting with the train and the train cars and i also love how difrent trains have unique cab designs and features and i love this game so much and i play this game almost evry day and i hope that this game will be a success and i hope evrone will enjoy this awsome game -derail vally-

Driving the steam locomotives make me feel like a little kid again, when I used to play Trainz Railroad Simulator 2007 on my Walmart Dell. Plenty of games have given me nostalgia, but I don't remember the last time a game made me emotional in that way. The devs nailed this one. Truly a masterpiece.

Great trains simulator. I have played TrainSim5 (VR is not out yet) and it doesn't give the same realism this game does. The overall feel and immersion is great. There's so much the developers can add and it still seems like a great game. I steam to a meta quest 3 using VD and it's awesome.

I decided to play this game in VR and when my first train slammed into the back of a stationary car at 75 KM/H, I honestly thought I was going to die. 10/10 game, I now play it in flat screen and I am having a great time!

I absolutely love Derail Valley. I love simulators. From obscure apps simulating natural selection in single and multicellular organisms and PowderToy type chemical interaction sim, through Flatout/Wreckfest/BeamNG and Snowrunner and Train sim games all the way to KSP or "study-level" flight sims like X-Plane and MSFS2020. When it comes to more typical gaming genres, i value sandbox-type, preferably open world (think Morrowind, Ubisoft type), nonlinear, freeform gameplay. I did notice Derail Valley when it appeared on Steam, but at release it seemed to have too small scope to me. I initially thought that i would get bored by such a small map, that the gameplay would be too repetitive, so i decided to wait and see. I wasn't an early adopter, but i did enjoy watching YT gameplay videos. Much, much later i bought Derail Valley during sale, and i loved it immediately. I consider Derail Valley to be the best railsim on the market. Yes, the scope is smaller, yes you're not driving on existing tracks, yes the gameworls seems oddly empty, since you're the only living person there, but none of that matters, because the primary gameloop is a lot of fun. All those Train Simulators, TrainSim Worlds etc., are basically just DLC selling platforms made by extremely greedy developers. Compare to Derail Valley, that costs a few pennies, but has a dedicated developer who keeps adding more and more features constantly AND FOR FREE, some of which add so much content/improve the game in significant way, that it could be considered a reboot/sequel/whatever. Think Hello Games type of commitment. Gaming on PC and consoles would be exactly the same dumpster fire that is the android gaming market, if it wasn't for indie developers like AltFuture! Derail Valley is amazing! The key aspect of Derail Valley isn't variety, it's immersion. Derail Valley has solid physical simulation and hands-on approach to everything. Game loop consists of delivering freight cargo from station to station (passenger service is planned in one of the future releases afaik). You have to do everything yourself, manually. The game doesn't simulate just the train operations, but also a little of the bureaucracy, which might seem insane, but in reality it adds to the immersion/overall fun. You cannot just jump into the game and start driving whatever, wherever (unless you start in sandbox mode). There is a solid progression system. How does it work? You get one type of basic, low-performance shunter in the beginning, you are taught how to pick up the "jobs", and how to finish them. You're also taught the basic of simple system allowing you to modify your engines in various ways. Selecting a job isn't a manner of clicking on some menu, it's all handled within the game itself. Basically every station has a little office with a table full of binders containing job description. You pick the job you want to do, put it inside the job validator machine, and it prints out binder with detailed info about the job (what is the time limit, what wagons you're supposed to pick up, where they're parked, what station you're supposed to deliver them to, and what wagons go to which sidings/platforms). There are multiple types - shunting, cargo delivery (there multiple cargo types, each requiring a specific license), logistic deliveries. Each job is rewarded with cash, which is then used to pay for cab repairs, upgrades and new licenses (the progression system, basically). Apart from the obvious (pick up the correct wagons and deliver them to correct place without damage), you also need to pay attention to speed limits, handle the engine with care, so it doesn't get damaged. If you drive like a maniac slipping on the rails, braking so much that there are sparks flying off of the wheels, you can damage the train so badly, that paying for the repairs costs more than what you get for succesfully completed job. Although the graphics was on the simple side when the game released, (think solo/tiny dev team Unity game from 10 years ago type of graphics), it improved so much, that if you compare screenshots from then and now, you can barely believe it's the same game. And the improvements are ongoing still, much more features are planned. And again, all the updates were free (i know, how sad, that something like free major updates became an exception). Then there's more stuff to do, like restoring broken old locomotives, fixing and customizing the cabs you own, looking for hidden soundtrack tapes, and more stuff is planned for later updates. Oh, and btw, the game can be played both on flatscreen and in VR. Derail Valley shows us how amazing mainstream train sims COULD be, if the development was fuelled by passion for the subject instead of corporate greed. 10/10 My only gripe with DV (a minor one) - the papers that list jobs you can do, are always lying on a huge pile on the desktop, and even if you take the time to sort them out and lay them out in an organized manner, the game doesn't save their position, and upon reloading, they're back on the pile. There's a mod that fixes that, i just hope that the dev will eventually implement that fix into vanilla game. I think it's caused by the fact, that new jobs appear on the desk, and the amount of available jobs can exceed the available place on the table. The game does save locations of player-placed items, everywhere except the job-desks. So, if you're OCD, it's gonna add tens of minutes to each gameplay session, because everytime you finish a job (or at least everytime when a new job is generated), the job papers are gonna get scrambled back on the pile, and you're gonna have to reorganize them again and again.