There are few VR games as simple or cozy as Toy Trains VR. It’s surprising, too–this debut from Polish virtual reality studio Something Random was engineered by the creators of violent existential crisis simulator SUPERHOT VR, representing a dramatic change of pace in more ways than one.
You therefore enter Toy Trains’ quaint world with your guard up, wondering when the twist arrives in this sandbox experience. Thankfully, what you see is what you get: a relaxing, adorable, uncomplicated game that brings back memories of simpler times–both in gaming and real life.
Toy Trains VR has a delightfully straightforward setup. You’re a young person who discovers a dusty suitcase in your grandfather’s attic–a train set, which comes alive with tiny inhabitants who ask you to help them build their world. There’s no definitive solution to any puzzle; there’s no timer to apply pressure; it’s just you, your creativity, a parts catalog, the board, and a bunch of funny Borrowers giving you tips and celebrating your successes.
You start out with simple pieces, which showcase Toy Trains’ light, warm sense of humor: the standard small piece of track is called “straight”, followed by the medium “straaight” and large “straaaight.” It’s a stupid joke that never fails to raise a smile. As you progress, you unlock new pieces–snakes, turnbacks, bridges, slopes, tunnels, and more. Each of these is introduced with a simple tutorial before you’re thrown into a full-size canvas to create your track, incorporating everything you’ve learned.
The main aim of the game is to connect a central building site to different resources–timber yards, mines, and other specialists. Once you’ve done this, you set your train and wagon, pull a cord, and if everything works, you pull another cord on the building site to upgrade it. The map then throws up new resource points for you to extend your railway to, repeating the process, often with those new systems.
As you reach the third or fourth stage, you begin to anticipate the arrival of more supply points; you find yourself extending your railway across the full area of the map from the start. It doesn’t feel like a chore, either; you relish picking the right pieces, adding your unique take and negotiating various waterways, raised platforms, and classic obstacles. It’s problem-solving 101, but Toy Trains VR doesn’t treat you with kid gloves; it’s genuinely satisfying to place your own stamp on a landscape, with the occasional creative flourish.
Yet even when things seem easy, you can regularly paint yourself into a corner, especially if you’re easily distracted. If you don’t take a regular step back to appreciate the bigger picture, you can wreck your best-laid plans, as tracks end up being too close together or intersect one another, you run out of space ahead of a turn, or water prevents you from placing a critical bridge to complete a loop. You’ll’ve thrown dozens of useless pieces of track on the floor in no time.
While planning mistakes are common, placing mistakes are rare. Toy Trains’ controls are tight enough, complemented by a system of track and item placement that predictably lands on its straightforward grid squares. You always know which piece to pick up and rarely, if ever, miscalculate distance or length.
However, pieces spring out of catalog pages in the same orientation, meaning you often have to awkwardly twist your hands to drop them in certain ways. This could be fixed with the simple ability to pass items from one hand to another, but this doesn’t seem to work–surprising, given this capability is a cornerstone of SUPERHOT VR. Still, it’s not the end of the world, especially as you might find yourself choosing to stand up and place track from above.
All the while, Toy Trains VR looks cute, smooth, and simple–a lightweight visual style that’s perfect for standalone VR headsets like the Meta Quest 3 (version tested). Your tiny friends look and feel alive, complemented by the train set’s colorful brightness that cuts through the drab attic space to drag you into the world you’re creating.
Extra praise is reserved for an understated yet beautiful soundtrack. It’s mostly joyous, but in certain moments, the music’s tone becomes more melancholy. As Toy Trains VR is an exercise in solitude–both through its lonely attic location, and the wider feeling you may get in real life as someone wearing a headset–it’s surprisingly affecting, and often amplified by the game’s low-key story, which keeps you up to date on your absent parents, who send you postcards between levels.
All in all, Toy Trains is a lovely little triumph that will satisfy all ages, as well as both VR newcomers and veterans. It doesn’t do anything groundbreaking, but it doesn’t need to; it’s a game of simple pleasures, channeling feelings that many of us know too well, if we were lucky enough to have our own train set, Hot Wheels, or Scalextric.
What’s more, Toy Trains VR may be one of the most relaxing games of 2024, and deserves a place on any player’s wishlist. It might not feel cutting edge, but it definitely feels special.
