Rail Mania

by darkshadow

Please ensure LD review are from the right version! If you enjoy the game, please check out the newer itch.io version with some quality suggestions left by reviewers

It is the 1840s The Railways are booming Britain is in the grip of railway mania. Everyone is getting rich, this technology is going to change the world.

You are a driver in the yard, organize together trains and beat the par move count. Progress through the campaign to see the story of Rail Mania and collect newspaper articles. There is also a free-play and watch only mode.

Rail Mania was designed and tested by the author, growing out of a shunting-puzzle solver they handwrote. The game code (puzzle solver, game, vector graphics, UI and audio processing) was written with Claude, an AI by Anthropic, under their direction. Sound effects are recordings from Freesound and Open Sound Library, credited in game. The newspaper articles are written by the author and the images are taken from online public domain sources, full credits in game.

Comments5

Nazavtra21 Oct 2026, 19:43

I'd maybe make the train movement animation a bit faster. Sometimes you already know how to solve the puzzle, but you have to wait for the train to get there.

Nesmon21 Oct 2026, 19:47

I think it was hard work to make this kind of game. There are a lot of settings and levels. Thank you for your work, dude!

Nesmon21 Oct 2026, 19:48

I think it was hard work to make this kind of game. There are a lot of settings and levels. Thank you for your work, dude! (Yeah, i think the same you should make the traim movement faster)

darkshadowauthor21 Oct 2026, 20:00

@rogaven and @nesmon thank you for your feedback point well taken, the speed and the effects are quite hard to balance, make it faster then the audio would feel off, I'll be adding some sort of quick jump or fast forward in the post compo game (that or maybe a second loco? Can never have enough trains)

Fis21 Oct 2026, 20:27

Took a little bit to get a hang for it, I was thinking too much of tower of hanoi, that larger numbers can't be put on lower numbers.
I agree, the animation takes quite long, so some way of increasing the speed or skipping the animation would be great once you know how it works and want to focus on solving the levels.

Great game!

Other games by @darkshadow

★2.82

★3.00

★2.81