Endless Rails – The Train That Must Keep Moving

A train races through a post-apocalyptic wasteland, hordes of monsters approach from all sides, and drones circle around the train while automatically opening fire. Between two stations, you only have a few moments to decide what to buy, which train car to add, and how to arrange your composition. The next ride is short, but during that brief period, everything can quickly turn into chaos. That is the core of Endless Rails. Studio Monoblok takes the familiar bullet heaven formula and puts a train in place of the usual hero. You are not controlling a character fighting through hordes of enemies; instead, you are trying to keep the entire train composition alive. The idea immediately makes sense and is different enough to stand out.

That may be the game's biggest strength: it does not try to overcomplicate its basic premise. You build the best train you can, survive for as long as possible, and see how far you can get. The problem is that after a few hours, it becomes clear that the idea itself is more interesting than the amount of content currently built around it.

The Core Loop Is Simple, But Very Addictive

Each run consists of short rides between stations. The drones handle much of the work, circling the train and automatically firing at enemies, while you keep an eye on the situation and try not to lose control as the waves become increasingly dangerous. When you reach a station, the pace briefly slows down. This is where you spend your coins on new train cars, weapons, drone slots and various buffs, before getting back on the tracks.

The rhythm works very well. You quickly move from combat to making decisions and then straight back into combat, giving the game that familiar “just one more run” feeling. It is very easy to launch the game intending to play a single run, only to finish that attempt and immediately start another.

Train Cars Are What Give the Game Its Identity

The strongest part of Endless Rails is definitely its train-car system.

You can add new cars, rearrange them and, most importantly, merge them. Merging makes train cars stronger and unlocks additional modules. This is much more interesting than simply picking the next passive bonus, because you start thinking about the actual construction of your train.

It is no longer just a question of what you are going to buy, but where you are going to place it and how the new component will fit into your existing composition.

This is where the game manages to create something of its own. The train is not simply a charming replacement for the traditional protagonist – it is the central system around which the entire gameplay is built.

I remember one run where I was trying to create a purely offensive setup with as many fire-based train cars as possible. At first, it looked brutal. Enemies could barely get close enough to become a serious threat, and it felt like I had found a combination that could carry me a long way.

Then a wave arrived that required a little more control, and the entire plan started falling apart. That was when I realized just how important the actual composition of the train is, rather than simply focusing on how much damage you can deal.

Building Your Setup Is Fun, But It Could Be Much Deeper

This is also where we reach one of the game's biggest missed opportunities. The foundation for serious buildcrafting is there. You have train cars, merging, weapons, drones, buffs and permanent upgrades, so at first it feels like combining all these systems could lead to a huge number of different compositions.

During the first few hours, there is genuinely a lot of experimentation. You try different approaches, change your priorities and figure out which combinations work best. The problem is that, over time, you begin to recognize certain patterns and naturally return to the setups you already know are effective.

That does not mean the system is bad. In fact, it is good enough to make you wish it were deeper.

I would have liked to see more combinations that completely change how you approach the train, more specialized cars that require specific strategies, and more synergies that initially seem strange but can become extremely powerful with the right setup. Those additions could make the difference between a game you play for a few evenings and a roguelite you keep coming back to for weeks.

When a Great Idea Starts Showing Its Limits

The biggest problem becomes obvious once the initial excitement starts to wear off. After a few hours, you begin to recognize the patterns. There is not enough enemy variety to make every new run feel like a completely different challenge, while the differences between builds are not always significant enough to make every attempt feel like a completely new experience.

This is especially noticeable because the train-car system is interesting enough to make you expect more from it. Once you can merge cars and create different combinations, it is natural to want the game to take that idea one step further and give you more ways for those decisions to fundamentally change the run.

Instead, after a while, you often return to similar solutions simply because they work best. Rather than asking yourself, “What completely different build could I create this time?”, you start thinking, “How quickly can I recreate what worked for me last time?”

For a roguelite, that is an important distinction.

Because of this, I could not easily imagine spending dozens and dozens of hours constantly experimenting in Endless Rails. The core loop is good enough to keep you playing, but the content surrounding it does not currently have the same breadth.

The Visual Style Has Character

Visually, the game makes a better impression than you might expect from a project of this size. Thick outlines, bright colors and stylized post-apocalyptic landscapes give it a look that resembles an illustration from a comic book.

The visual style is not particularly complex, but it has character. More importantly, it remains readable when things get chaotic. That is extremely important in the bullet heaven genre, where the screen can quickly become filled with enemies, effects and projectiles to the point where it becomes difficult to understand what is actually happening.

Endless Rails generally manages to maintain that readability even when the action gets more intense. The train remains the central point of the screen, enemies are easy to distinguish from the environment, and weapon effects provide enough visual feedback to show how well your current setup is performing.

The soundtrack fits nicely into all of this. It is rhythmic, energetic enough, and supports that satisfying feeling when a large group of enemies disappears under the fire of your drones. It is not the kind of soundtrack that will necessarily sell you on the game by itself, but it fits the pace very well.

Every Failed Run Still Leaves Something Behind

As with most roguelites, a failed run does not mean that you have completely wasted your time.

There is a permanent upgrade tree that gradually improves your future attempts, so even when a run ends much earlier than planned, there is still a feeling that you have made at least a small amount of progress.

It is not a revolutionary meta-progression system, but it does what it needs to do. It gives you a reason to start another run and helps make the early stages of future attempts a little easier.

More importantly, meta-progression does not completely replace the knowledge you gain by playing. The more time you spend with the game, the better you understand which decisions make sense, when to invest in a particular part of your composition, and when it is time to stop chasing pure damage and build something more balanced.

The best roguelites manage to progress alongside the player – the numbers get bigger, but you also become better at understanding the systems. Endless Rails has some of that feeling, but its limited depth ultimately prevents it from developing as far as it could.

Short Sessions Suit It Perfectly

What could be a weakness in another game is also one of Endless Rails’ biggest strengths.

The game works extremely well in short sessions. You get into a run quickly, something is happening almost immediately, and there is very little downtime before the game starts presenting you with meaningful decisions. You complete several rides, reach new stations, upgrade your train and, in a relatively short amount of time, feel like you have gone through a complete little adventure.

Because of that, I found it much more enjoyable to play in several shorter sessions rather than trying to spend an entire evening with it. When you take a break and return later, the core loop feels fresh again. When you play for several hours without stopping, the repetition becomes much more obvious.

That is important to keep in mind when evaluating the game. Endless Rails is not trying to be a massive roguelite that will consume the next hundred hours of your life. Its focus is much narrower, and within that focus, a lot of things work very well.

Who Is Endless Rails For?

If you enjoy the bullet heaven genre and are looking for something short, stylish and built around a sufficiently different central idea, Endless Rails is definitely worth checking out. It is especially well suited to players who enjoy games they can launch for twenty or thirty minutes, play a few attempts, and then put down without feeling like they have interrupted something important.

Fans of optimization will also find plenty to enjoy in building and arranging their train. That moment when several different components finally start working together and you turn your train into a machine capable of clearing everything in its path is probably the most satisfying experience the game has to offer.

However, if you are expecting a roguelite with a huge amount of content, deep buildcrafting and dozens of hours of experimentation, you will relatively quickly feel that you have seen a large part of what the game has to offer. The problem is not the quality of the central idea, but the fact that there are currently not enough layers around it to keep every new run unpredictable for long.

Conclusion

Endless Rails is a smart and enjoyable little roguelite that builds its best idea around a train rather than simply shooting endless hordes of enemies. Its train-building, positioning and merging systems give it an identity that many games in the genre lack, while the short rides and fast pace allow you to get into the action almost immediately.

When you put together a good composition and watch your drones destroy everything trying to reach the train, the game can be extremely satisfying. It is even better when a few moments later a wave completely tears through your supposedly perfect build and reveals a serious weakness. It is between those two moments that Endless Rails shows just how well its central idea works.

The biggest problem is that it does not take that idea far enough. Once the initial experimentation wears off, it becomes clear that the game could use more enemy variety, deeper synergies, more unusual combinations and additional systems that would meaningfully change how you build your train. The current amount of content is enough to make a good game, but not enough to fully realize the potential of its very interesting concept.

For its price and scope, however, that is not necessarily a reason to skip it. What you get is a focused, charming and occasionally very addictive package that works best when played in shorter sessions. There is simply a lingering feeling that Endless Rails could have been considerably more if it had a few more layers of content and deeper systems built around its excellent core idea.

Score: 7.5/10

The game was played on: PC.