Hello everybody and welcome to another Timely Review. Just recently, we looked at RollerCoaster Tycoon 2 and Transport Tycoon (more specifically, its open-source remake of it), two of which are games that have caused Chris Sawyer to become a notable figure in the history of game developers. But while some of his games that cemented a legendary status, that’s unfortunately not the case for today’s game. Chris Sawyer’s Locomotion is a spiritual successor to Transport Tycoon that sadly failed to have the same staying power as its predecessor game. In fact, I didn’t even know that this game existed until about 3 years ago. But why did this game not share the same level of success as the original Transport Tycoon? In this review, I’ll try to uncover exactly that.

A little history lesson here. After Transport Tycoon was developed in 1994, Chris Sawyer had envisioned plans to make a sequel game. At some point down the line, development of what would’ve been Transport Tycoon 2 turned into starting development of RollerCoaster Tycoon in 1996, which would be released in 1999. Following the success of that game, there were two expansion packs for it, and a sequel game in 2002 which also had two expansion packs of its own. After development of RollerCoaster Tycoon 2 in 2002, the expansion packs were headed off to Frontier, finally giving Sawyer the time to develop the successor game to Transport Tycoon. Frontier would later be given the lead of RollerCoaster Tycoon 3, and while Sawyer did have a consulting role in that game, his primary focus was on Chris Sawyer’s Locomotion.

But despite his previous success with Transport Tycoon and his two RollerCoaster Tycoon games, Chris Sawyer’s Locomotion (often referred to as just “Locomotion” for short and will sometimes be referred to as such in this review) did not receive the same critical acclaim or sales as either of those games and went off the radar for most gamers at the time. As the years have gone by, reception of the game has gradually become more and more positive and the game has received the love that his other games had been known for, only by a much smaller fanbase. Despite the lukewarm reception on launch, an open-source project known as OpenLoco has been in development since 2018 and was founded by the same team who originally founded OpenRCT2 and the game has received more positive reviews on digital re-releases.

Chris Sawyer’s Locomotion was released in September 2004, six months after OpenTTD’s first release, and nearly two whole years after RollerCoaster Tycoon 2. Simon Foster, who created the art assets in Transport Tycoon and both RollerCoaster Tycoon games, would return to contribute his artistic talent for this game. The composers of the original Transport Tycoon and both RollerCoaster Tycoon games, John Broomhall and Allister Brimble also both contributed to putting together the soundtrack of this game. As the game also includes music from Scott Joplin, he is also credited as a composer for the game. Like the two RollerCoaster Tycoon games and the original Transport Tycoon, Locomotion was coded in Assembly.

Unlike the original Transport Tycoon, Chris Sawyer’s Locomotion has been digitally re-released on other platforms. In 2013, a mobile port of the game was released and titled “Transport Tycoon” which was actually based on this game and not the original one. In 2015, the original PC release was put up on Steam and GOG. The scores of the game on both platforms are positive, further illustrating that the game has since been received more positively than critics viewed it on launch. Is it true that this game deserved better? Well, if you read the title of the review, then you already know my stance on the game, but maybe we can figure it out if we dig a little bit deeper.

Let's Get You TRAIN-ed On The Game


Transport Tycoon except it looks like RollerCoaster Tycoon - Some meme title somewhere

As you would expect, the main gameplay of the game is largely based on its predecessor game. You develop a transport network of roadways, railways, docks, and airports to bring people and cargo from one place to another. This game includes a new feature known as the “Performance Index” which roughly measures how well your company and your routes are functioning. Changes in this game over Transport Tycoon are largely quality of life changes over radical new features. It’s now easier to see exactly how much cargo is waiting at your stations since you only have to hover your mouse over them instead of opening a new pop-up window to check. Since Locomotion’s track builder is based off of the one in RollerCoaster Tycoon 2, it also opens up a lot more possibilities in track design that you still can't to do in OpenTTD. In this game, you can even… rotate the camera. Something OpenTTD would kill to have.

Unlike OpenTTD, Chris Sawyer’s Locomotion comes with a whole range of scenarios by default. While Locomotion did not receive any expansion packs, it still packs more scenarios in the base release than either of the RollerCoaster Tycoon games, launching with 40 scenarios compared to RCT1 and RCT2 which had 22 and 24 respectively. The downside of this is that without any expansion packs, its total scenario count pales in comparison to both games with the expansions (81 and 55 respectively), and in contrast to OpenTTD, Locomotion does not include a feature to generate maps randomly or via achromatic heightmaps. It also has no option to play against no AI opponents, meaning that the game is less accessible from a sandbox-like perspective than OpenTTD.

In spite of this lack of solo play or random map generation feature, I would still consider Chris Sawyer’s Locomotion to be more beginner-friendly of a game than OpenTTD. Compared to OpenTTD, it has many small improvements which eventually lead up to a sum that’s bigger than its parts. Whereas OpenTTD lacked any proper tutorial (other than the downloadable tutorial scenario), Chris Sawyer’s Locomotion includes a proper tutorial and three easy beginner scenarios to slowly get comfortable with the game.

Familiar, Yet Also Shinier


Jeff Bezos got NOTHING on me.

If my reviews of OpenTTD and both of his RollerCoaster Tycoon games are anything to go by, it’s that Chris Sawyer’s games are always impeccable when it comes to presentation, and this game is no exception. The UI is generally cleaner than it is in OpenTTD Simon Foster’s art style still reigns just as supreme in this game as it did in his previous games. The game also has dynamic music that changes depending on your in-game era, from ragtime pieces in the 1900s to more “pumpy” rock and pop pieces in the 1960s to techno tracks once you approach the new millennium. Like in OpenTTD, the game also has an inflation system where everything will gradually become more expensive as time passes, and you’ll also get more money per delivery, and you’ll also unlock more vehicles to use as the older ones start becoming obsolete.

This game does have a better difficulty curve than RollerCoaster Tycoon 2, but still not as good as RollerCoaster Tycoon 1. Occasionally I’d find a scenario that was much easier than the last five or so that I played, and then the one immediately after that one was the hardest one I had played so far. The game is sometimes easy to breeze through and yet you’ll also sometimes face a hard challenge that you’ll have a lot of trouble getting through, particularly if the scenario goal is based on Performance Index since that’s a randomly generated statistic that you don’t have that much control over.

Money management in this game (and also OpenTTD for that matter) is a fair bit harder in this game than in RollerCoaster Tycoon 1 or 2. While you could feasibly get away with not taking out any loans if you’re good enough, here you will have to take out a lot of loans if you wish to build a good enough network, and sometimes you’ll need to do that fast. Another difference from RollerCoaster Tycoon is that you don’t receive the same amount of money back from removing your own track pieces compared to building them meaning that you will waste money if you try to experiment with several different options on the fly and this forces you to plan ahead where you need to place everything down since mistakes are much more costly. Whether this is a positive or a negative change is up to your own view.

This game also gives you much fewer ways to interact with your competition. Transport Tycoon gave you a number of ways to mess up your opponents and through some dirty tactics, you could destroy their vehicles and their relationship with their towns whilst keeping yours intact. In Chris Sawyer’s Locomotion, underhanded tactics to wreck your competition are still possible, although you’ll have to take much more indirect approaches since you can’t build junctions on your opponent’s road or rail networks. There were much more steps taken to ensure that you can’t (literally) wreck the competition and the AI in this game is generally improved over Transport Tycoon, even though they’re still not particularly great most of the time and still build lots of spaghetti-like networks. Since you can’t turn the AI opponents off, dealing with them is something you just need to do unless you have the patience to edit every scenario to turn them off.

Just like Transport Tycoon, the game has different “climates” (as they were referred to in that game), taking you to Great Britain, North America, and the Swiss Alps. They play mostly the same with a few different industries in each version, and they all have their own sets of vehicles that get unlocked. The Swiss Alps scenarios even give you an alternate railroad type to build. A cool detail I really like is the default currency is British pounds in the Great Britain scenarios, but changes to US dollars in the North American scenarios and to Euros for the Swiss Alps scenarios. Locomotion also omits the Toyland climate from Transport Tycoon, meaning that every theme you have is grounded in reality. I personally enjoyed the Toyland climate, but I know that most people don't so they won't be bothered by this. I'm not really bothered by it either.

Diamonds Have Rough Edges


Railroad spaghetti is always on the menu.

Even though Chris Sawyer’s Locomotion is a diamond in the rough, just because a game is underrated does not mean that it’s flawless, and indeed Chris Sawyer’s Locomotion does have a few shortcomings, particularly compared to OpenTTD. Some people might think it’s unfair to compare this game to OpenTTD since this is a game that was sold as retail two decades ago whereas OpenTTD is a free open-source game that continues to be updated to this day, but the fact of the matter is that games evolve, and as games evolve, we as game reviewers need to evolve with it.

Chris Sawyer’s Locomotion does suffer from a few bothersome aspects. Unlike OpenTTD, there’s no way to upgrade your road or railway infrastructure once you’ve already built it meaning that once you get to newer locomotives that require different bridge materials to run at their fullest potential, you’ll have to manually delete your stone sections of bridges and then rebuild them as steel bridge and since only stone bridges can support inclines, this means that it’s very easy to forget to change them back. Unless you have the foresight and vigilance to build every bridge with the best materials ahead of time, it will be tedious and frustrating to replace every bridge so that your new vehicles can properly run.

This same thing applies to vehicles. OpenTTD gives you the option to replace and upgrade your vehicle fleet quickly when new vehicles come out, but Locomotion requires you to manually stop them, go through some menus to sell the outdated vehicle parts and build the new ones. All, one at a time, for each vehicle. On the early scenarios that aren’t expected to go on for too long, this isn’t a problem, but scenarios that take place later in the game that are expected to continue into different eras will require you to take note of this and while you can avoid the bridge problem with enough forward planning, the problem with upgrading vehicles is one that you have no choice but to deal with.

Placing trams is also a bit of a pain in the ass if you plan on them going in a certain direction. You can flip them around, but then that becomes a problem when you need to replace the trams after years of running and then need to go through that whole process all over again for each individual tram. This eventually got to the point where I stopped trying to manage this and let the tram networks run in whatever their default direction was, even if I didn’t envision it running that way. The AI for ships has also sadly not improved at all since the original Transport Tycoon, and telling them to go somewhere is still like teaching polynomials to a newborn baby.

While I mentioned that the AI makes some questionable decisions in how it lays its network out, they’re still able to build much more than you can with the amount of money that you start out with. It’s not super uncommon to start a scenario with not a huge amount of money and only a few minutes later find that the AI has somehow built two giant train tracks that would’ve cost you an arm and a leg to build one of them at that time, since you simply didn’t have the money to. Thankfully, the AI doesn’t tend to act super quickly, so I guess that and its limited brainpower is a blessing in disguise.

Did It Deserve Better?


As is typical of Sawyer’s games, the main menu goes just as hard as the actual game, and doubly so for the music.

In my opinion, yes, Chris Sawyer’s Locomotion did deserve better and judging from its retrospective reception, it is doing better now than it did in 2004. All in all, Locomotion is a game that is basically another iteration of Transport Tycoon, and even OpenTTD with quite a few changes to it. Some for the worse, some for the better.

One of the biggest criticisms I see about the game is its outdated graphics, and indeed this was cited as one of the reasons the game was a flop among critics. I must concede that it’s true that the graphics didn’t really improve over Chris Sawyer’s other games. This game came out 10 years after Transport Tycoon did, and while this game does have notably shinier graphics, the improvement doesn't reflect the amount of time between the two games. This may sound like a weird criticism in today’s day and age, but back in the early 2000s, the concept of using retro graphics for stylistic reasons hadn’t really caught on yet, so a lack of modernized graphics was seen as a failure on part of the game developers and not a choice to complement the game’s natural feel.

Ultimately, the game was released too late for its own good. The fact that it still used the same isometric graphics and art style as Sawyer’s previous games in an age where 3D was on its way to take over and graphics was a huge selling point means that it was seen as “unprogressive” to the average critic eyes back then, and OpenTTD releasing six months before this game meant that it had to compete with a game that was literally free and could do a lot of the same things that this game could. People already playing OpenTTD felt little incentive to jump into this game other than for curiosity, and for everyone else, the game was basically just RollerCoaster Tycoon with all the rides removed except for the Miniature Railway.

Compared to OpenTTD, Locomotion is much less customizable and without an option to jump into a randomly generated map without any AI, it doesn’t have the same potential as a comfort game that OpenTTD has. Like Transport Tycoon Deluxe and RollerCoaster Tycoon 2, Locomotion also has a scenario editor is even more in-depth than its RCT2 counterpart and its ability to generate random landscapes can theoretically emulate the randomly generated map feature of Transport Tycoon, but this is nowhere near as fluid as just opening up the game and hitting play.

All of these put together meant that the game had a lot to compete against in terms of both games and critics, and it ultimately couldn’t keep up with all of them. Still, the game is unapologetically a Chris Sawyer game on every level from its extremely in-depth and deep mechanics, charming art style and perfect music to get you in the mood to build some transport, the game is absolutely worth a try. If you’re a fan of OpenTTD, you’ll enjoy this game too. It has a pretty sizable number of improvements over the original game to give it a proper go, and it’s generally quite cheap to purchase nowadays.

In an alternate timeline where we got this game instead of RollerCoaster Tycoon 1, I reckon it would have the same legacy as that game has to this very day. Unfortunately as other games evolved, this game couldn’t evolve with it. Still, I am glad to see that it’s getting at least a little bit of the love that it deserves to get. It’s not a perfect game or a perfect sequel, but it’s definitely a game worthy of being a follow-up to Transport Tycoon, and both this and OpenTTD deserve to take spots in your game library if you’re interested in tycoon games.

You can buy Chris Sawyer’s Locomotion on either Steam or GOG. Do note that just like the RollerCoaster Tycoon 1 and 2, the Steam version is sometimes prone to crashing, but it’s still perfectly playable to me as someone who owns that version. The GoG version might be more stable, though both of them are fine versions to have. And increasing the game's resolution (which I did to grab the screenshots in this article) also seems to have helped a bit. That said, the version you buy doesn’t really matter if you plan on using OpenLoco with it since that will improve its stability and doesn’t care where you bought the game from. OpenLoco is still very much in its infancy compared to OpenRCT2, but if you’re interested in using it, you can find it here.

At this point, we’ve covered the four main games that Chris Sawyer is generally known for (or technically three since he’s never had involvement in OpenTTD, but it’s just easiest to count it as four), but I have one game left to cover in this series. Even though he had no development in the game, my next Timely Review takes the jump to 3D as we look at RollerCoaster Tycoon 3.

This may be a long shot, but do you have any experience with Chris Sawyer's Locomotion? Do you agree that it's an underrated game that deserves more love? Let us know what you think in the comments below.

My Other Chris Sawyer Game Reviews