Train Station Renovation

The Good
Full disclosure: this review is based on four hours of play and 5 of 15 levels beaten (100% each).

This is a very relaxing game. You spend your time cleaning up train stations: collecting litter, removing graffiti and busted objects, etc. I found it very satisfying to see how my hard work made the stations a nicer place.

The Bad
Unfortunately, soon the biggest shortcoming of the game becomes obvious: the train stations become bigger, but your work does not change and the game becomes repetitive fast.

But this does not hurt the relaxing atmosphere much; the problem are the renovation objectives. Besides cleaning up, you also have to place a number of objects (e.g. chairs, tables, decoration) in the rooms and on the platforms. While some items have enough variation (many tables, chairs and garbage bins are available), there are also many essential objects missing, for example no toilet roll holders or interesting decoration items. This means that in the end all rooms look essentially the same and can't be decorated realistically. What annoyed me most is that the developers took the time to add stupid items like Christmas decoration which should have been spent on other objects.

The second problem is that placing objects does not work well, for example you can't really see the alignment of bigger objects beforehand. It is also unimportant if the object placement makes sense: the game only counts if you used the required number of items from a certain category.

I also missed the option to renovate the outside of the train stations. When dealing with overgrown platforms, you can pick up some predefined clumps of grass, but in the end it will be still overgrown.

The Bottom Line
I had my fun for three hours, but then the repetition and the shortcomings of the renovation aspect kicked in and I became bored fast. If you, like me, received the game as part of a Humble Choice bundle, you probably should give it a chance and relax a bit. But I would advise against purchasing it separately.