RAILROADS & CATACOMBS
The roads are rails, but you cannot comb the cat
The name may conjure images of a goth railway management game in which you transport skeletons between the ossuaries beneath Paris, but in reality Railroads & Catacombs has far more in common with Darkest Dungeon than Train Sim Underworld. Although that actually sounds like an excellent idea for a game.
Instead of a carriage or staircase to convey you between areas, here you’re on a train. It’s a rickety locomotive that requires coal, scavenged from your victories in the field, and it gradually fills with characters and extra cars as you travel and upgrade. New recruits come through a portal to replace those lost in the wilds surrounding the track, while decks can be fiddled with or have cards removed by a Railmancer, who has his own carriage.
As a roguelite card battler, you choose your destination depending on the difficulty you want to encounter, then send a character (each with different strengths and available cards, and who can be upgraded via various Warpaths) to explore a series of interconnected squares, which may contain enemies to fight, a boss, something valuable or something mysterious. The mysterious statues hand out new cards and upgrades, while the items of value generally turn out to be supplies, used for upgrading the train or aiding your character, though the weird pink lumps labelled ‘tongues’, used in research, hint at a more complex system behind the pickups.
CHOOSE YOUR DESTINATION DEPENDING ON THE DIFFICULTY YOU WANT TO ENCOUNTER
The gothic horror aesthetic and even the 3D cutout art style are reminiscent of DarkestDungeon, but what sets it apart from that game and SlaytheSpireis the importance of 3D positioning during combat. While you can’t move your character around using WASD as you do when exploring a map, cards such as Move Away, Jump and Crush –which moves you a space forward as you attack, forcing the enemy back –are important so you’re not standing in a square that’s going to be filled with something nasty –like the gloriously named Brown Rain –in the next turn. These spaces are easily spotted due to the red hatching applied to them, so being caught in one is always
