Locomoto Review - All Aboard The Cozy Train
Have you ever wanted to be a tiny, adorable anthropomorphised animal, delivering passengers and parcels across the countryside in a stolen train? Well, have I got the game for you!
Locomoto came out on PC in April and on Switch in June this year, with minimal fanfare. I recently discovered it when looking for a cosy game to play while trapped on a plane, and it served its purpose perfectly. I can lose hours in this game, rearranging stacks of supplies, decorating carriages, and completing little fetch quests while ignoring where my passengers actually want me to take them.
This game essentially turns the fetch quest into an art form. Everywhere you go, someone wants you to do something for them at another station. I always have shelves full of parcels that I need to take somewhere, paint cans and plant seeds that need to be delivered, and a list of items I want to craft at somebody’s workshop. My in-game map is covered in pins as I plan the next leg of my journey, distracted by yet another task on my to-do list. As the map opens up and there are more stations to visit, each fetch quest takes longer to complete, with even more distractions along the way.
I can imagine this game loop would irritate some people, but if you’re looking for an experience where you can switch off your brain and just enjoy watching the countryside whoosh past while occasionally bringing hot chocolate to your passengers, Locomoto is a lovely choice. However, I did find myself wishing that there would be more passengers coming aboard or that they would want more from me during our travels. I would have loved to be able to build a longer train with more carriages, have more passengers waiting for me on each platform, and have more micromanagement to do between stations.
Locomoto tends to focus less on train management and more on train decoration. You can paint the outside of each carriage, and decorate the inside with wallpaper, flooring, and various furniture items. There is a lot of freedom to create cute seating areas, complete with side tables, lamps, and storage shelves. The crafting system is akin to classic Minecraft, with resources being placed in different positions on a grid to build different items. Although there’s a crafting table on your train, it only features a 2×2 grid, so any items that need three resources horizontally or vertically require you to borrow someone else’s work table. Thankfully, these are marked on the map, so it’s easy enough to add a detour on your route. There are also different varieties of wood, metal, stone, and fabric, and although any of these will work, the appearance of your furniture is dependent on the types you choose. This mechanic resulted in me travelling back and forth across the map to collect black marble or oxidised copper so I could make sure my carriages were full of items from matching colour palettes.
Early in the game, it can be tricky to find the resources you need. You stumble upon rocks to mine or stumps to chop down, but you don’t start the game with a pickaxe or handaxe. In some towns, you can find someone else’s tools and borrow them, but you aren’t allowed to take them with you to the next station. As you progress and complete quests, however, you unlock more tools of your own, until eventually you can mine, chop, dig, and fish to your heart’s content. This leads to some interesting gating on some levels, with several areas you can only get to once you can finally break a particular rock, giving you yet another reason to come back to the stations you’ve already visited regularly and explore them again. Behind those gates are generally treasures like blueprints and cosmetics, allowing you to further customise your train and your player-character.
There is currently a bug on Switch 2 where sometimes, when you arrive at a station, the game doesn’t load in correctly and hangs, requiring a close and relaunch to fix. You don’t lose much progress—especially if you remember to manually save as you’re arriving—but it is a frustrating and semi-frequent interruption. Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like this bug will be getting fixed, as Green Tile Digital announced its closure on 11 September 2025. It’s disappointing to see another studio that values inclusion and sustainability being forced to close its doors, and I wish the developers all the best.
In general, Locomoto runs well enough and is also beautiful to look at. The sound design is lovely; the minimalist soundtrack and the choo-choo of the train combine into a relaxing soundscape. The game has offered me a world that I’ve enjoyed inhabiting, with each of the towns featuring its own unique identity and the various characters offering unexpected depth and personality. Some of the storylines also explore surprisingly meaningful subjects, from addressing pollution to encouraging people to get their flu vaccinations.
Best enjoyed with your favourite podcast in the background or a show on your second monitor, Locomoto really feels much like taking a soothing train ride through the countryside.
Locomoto was reviewed on the Nintendo Switch 2 (Switch native title) with code purchased by the writer.
