LifeisXbox’s Train Station Renovation review | Do you know what has a proven and stable positive reaction on your mental wellbeing? Cleaning and tidying up. Don’t believe me? Look at all the books out there that talk about throwing out the old junk that you don’t need or use anymore. Marie Kondo, for instance, has a few books dedicated to this topic. This is because cleaning, and thus ‘removing old memories’ helps us relax and unwind. It releases old tension that has been stored, literally in shelves and drawers. Removing that will let go of mental pressure and thusly has a positive effect on your mental wellbeing. And it seems like it that game developers have also caught wind of this. Look at the rise of ‘cleaning’ or ‘renovator’ games as of late. House Flipper, Power Wash Simulator, … are just a few from the repertoire. And this is where our next game review slots in as well. Let me introduce you to Train Station Renovation. Created and released by Live Motion games. The story, or in this case, mission? Restore and clean old, crummy stations and bring them back to their former glory. Upgrade your gear in the process, to further improve and hasten your work. Ready to find out if this one is your next ‘feel good’ game? Then prepare yourself! Take out your mop and bucket, because this is… Train Station Renovation!
We played Train Station Renovation for 6 hours on Xbox Series X. This game is also available on Microsoft Windows, Nintendo Switch, Mac OS, Xbox One
What we liked!
- Super relaxing| Had a hard day at work? Life getting through to you? Then fire this puppy up, turn on your headset and clean the stress away. Honestly, I was really surprised in how relaxing and mindful the gameplay actually is in Train Station Renovation. There ‘s an actual science to this. Cleaning works in a therapeutical way, at least I thought in real life. Turns out? This also had a similar effect on me in the digital world. I played this at a moment when I was feeling pretty stressed out, had a busy day at the job and the nearing summer heat wasn’t doing me any favors either. But after an hour or so of Train Station Renovation, I felt that my mind was more at ease again.
- Easy game| Another reason why Train Station Renovation is such a relaxing game? Has got to be the difficulty factor of it all. There is nothing hard about it. You take your time to survey the station. You think about where you will place down your recycling containers and you get to work. Your work gets even easier the more you play the game. Every time you complete a level, you earn stars. These stars you can use to upgrade your equipment to make them more efficient. The perfect combination if I’ve got any say about it!
- Chill vibes| And to top this relaxing therapeutical game off? We complete the mixture with a super relaxing soundtrack. They truly thought about having an entirely mindful game here. Soft instrumental combined with, I think chillhop? I don’t know how to fully describe the songs, but its got the ability to make you mellow, fast.
Somewhere between
- Furbishing| After you cleaned out every building, repainted every wall and repaired all the loose fittings? It’s time to do some furbishing. When you want to buy new furniture, you’ll have to open your handy-dandy tablet. Browsing through the online store of which ever universe this is, you’ll get to put down what ever your heart desired to buy… Or at least. As far as the requirement ask of you to buy. You’ll have to go about sparingly with your hard earned cash, because this isn’t a commodity that flows freely. It’s okay to buy something extra now and then? But don’t go spending it all, because cash is a hard accommodation to come by. But that isn’t the biggest issue here. The least fun part about this all, was actually placing your purchases down. Its so fiddley, you’ll be twisting and turning (literally) your blueprint down, for it to become green (and thus placeable). My first station I placed everything down as I would placing furniture down in real life. My second station, I just threw in everything in there as if it was a dumpster. Why? My OCD just couldn’t handle the fact that everything was being put down a little bit “off”. Your blueprint isn’t 100% what reality really show it to be. So keep this in mind.
What we disliked
- UI| While Train Station Renovation has an easy to read UI, there does seem to be an issue when you try to pick up stuff that is on the ground. Be prepared to do the, what can only described as the “please let me pick you up”, dance. Why? I don’t know. I think there’s a problem with how an object ‘s hitbox is portrayed, resulting in you walking and dancing around a seemingly easy to pick-up object. Let us say, for reference, a can of soda. You know how to pick up a can, you know the methodology that is behind you bending and picking it up. But your in-game avatar? Well, that’s an entire different story. Though I’m pretty sure it will be fixed in the future (at least I hope it will).
How long to beat the story | There is no real story.
How long to achieve 1000G | 10+ hours
Similar with | House Flipper
CONCLUSION
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