Recent reviews by A u t u m n

It doesn't cause any lag and has everything you could need without having to break everything by opening the SteamVR menu.
It has the best keyboard i've ever used in VR.
I haven't had a single issue with it since I started using it.

It's worth the money even if its not on sale

It runs fine on my 3080 but I can't get it to stop crashing, even after reinstalling it and my drivers it crashes at random for no reason.
Also crashes if you alt tab

It looks pretty, I guess

Broken 9 times out of 10

Don't buy this game. There WAS a good team behind it, but the truly good parts of the team have left for better projects.

The current developer is questionable at best.

They put out a EULA that is totally inappropriate.

In essence, what the EULA says;
You can't use the game on any network. The game requires you be connected to the internet to play it, so basically, you can't play the game.
If you ignore the fact you can't play the game and decide to play it anyways, don't even think about posting a monetized video playing the game, since that's also going against the EULA.
LICENSE CONDITIONS AND RESTRICTIONS

You agree to only use the Game Software in a manner that is consistent with this License and you SHALL NOT:
(a) without written permission from Stefan Kelnberger, use, advertise or exploit the Game Software commercially;
(c) use the Game Software, or permit use of the Game Software, in any kind of network, except as otherwise explicitly permitted in writing by Stefan Kelnberger;


The other negative reviews go into more detail about exactly what happened, i'd recommend you read those too if you're not already turned away.

I don't even use mods and I don't support adding EAC (anticheat).

Adding an anticheat to this social game is not only unnecessary, but also harms more people than it helps.

The reasons they gave to add it aren't even relevant to using modded clients, most malicious actions such as crashing and avatar ripping don't even need a modded client.

If they at least added the QoL and very-much-necessary acessibility features BEFORE doing this update, they wouldn't have pissed off their entire userbase.

Likely the best narrative game of the year.

It really does take the original game and expand on it, in such a way that it draws you in to play more and more, exploring and taking in the experience in a different way every single time.

It's hard to say the original game even compares to this, even despite this being completely based on it.
Exactly what everyone was hoping for.

Oh, and you get a bucket.

Cons: (9)
Intro for the first start is 100% volume and unskippable
Throws you right into a race before you've had the chance to set anything up
Multiplayer is dead (no players), it was mostly dead when the game originally launched anyways
Not the best quality sounds
The assistant in your ear never shuts up, repeats the exact same lines 1000 times
The AI don't have any clue what they're doing
The voice actors sound like generic cheap actors
The feeling of force feedback and how the trucks handle is questionable at best
Cooling down your brakes is pointless, you'd have to TRY to get your brakes to get to 1000° C.

Pros: (4)
Good training/licensing to learn all the mechanics of the game
It has all of the sounds you'd expect to hear, brake noise and everything
Fairly good graphics
Loads quickly

So can I recommend it? No, not for more than $10. Some free unity games could beat this.

TLDR; It's early access. Remember that. Things are planned to be added/fixed/optimized, but the game has been published under AeroSoft.


Ignore the negative reviews that say "it's laggy", "there's bad physics", or "the passengers aren't very good" while this game is still in early access. It's early access, i'm not sure why people expect the game to be completely finished and polished.

Anyways, it's a legitimately good game for early access, the bus models are good and the map is very faithful to how it is in real life. They have a roadmap which you can view on what's in progress, what's planned, and what's finished, and which phase they expect that feature/fix/optimization/upgrade to be in.

Things we expect to change over the time of early access, based on the roadmap (No idea if I can share the roadmap or not, but Steam would probably block the link anyways):
- The physics aren't perfect yet, they are basically the same as Fernbus and Tourist Bus Simulator (Both made by TML also).
- The passengers are incredibly simple, they can do 4 things. Get on the bus, Pay for a ticket, Get off the bus, and wait at the bus stop.
- Economy/Career. As of right now, the 1st phase, there's no economy or career. This is expected to be added in the 2nd phase.
- No modding tools just yet. Again, this is expected in the 2nd phase. We can expect Steam workshop support with this.
- Multiplayer. 2nd phase.
- More buses. These are expected to be added throughout the phases, and likely after full release. Most likely they will end up being DLC.
- Passenger audio. This isn't displayed in any specific phase, it's probably a while out though.
Of course, there's too much for me to list here. That's just the major stuff, there's minor things such as general variety and such that are planned, as well as optimization and fixes. I recommend checking out the roadmap.

The major downside: The publisher is AeroSoft. It's hard to say its a coincidence that the majority of the games published under AeroSoft are practically totally abandoned after about a year or two from being published, and they tend to end up getting out of early access too early, and magically another game comes out from that developer using the previous game as a base.
Maybe AeroSoft has a minimum number of games per year based on profit. Who knows. I just know whatever it is that's going on, is an issue for the developers making them release not-very-good games and abandon them before they're anywhere near being fixed or finished.
So tread lightly on games published under AeroSoft.

Why do companies even sign onto a publisher any more when they mostly only publish the game on Steam anyways? It's not especially complicated and the developer has to supply the screenshots, details, and videos for all the store pages anyways...

Also, i'm pretty sure every YouTuber that got this game in early access before public early access release got a script of things they HAD to say. Like, "I'm really impressed there's actually real companies like Burger King in this map" and such. I don't mind that, since i'm sure getting some licensing for those might've been either pricey or complicated.

Overall, its a good game and could be a potential competitor to ETS2.

The problem is, its lacking content (6.2 hours in and i've already unlocked all of the truck and trailer slots, and have 11 million euros) and there's still WAY too many bugs - it shouldn't be out of early access in this stage.

Maybe if they add more to the map (through DLC or however), more trucks, more trailers, and fix the bugs, then I can recommend it.

Unfortunately, they are focusing their efforts on porting this to console (despite it being incredibly buggy, and everyone knows what happens once a game is ported to console - PC support is practically outright dropped and everything is tuned to work best on consoles.) and using excuses to people's discussions about what's wrong with the game and the way they're treating it, so new content is unlikely to ever happen.


EDIT (December 21, 2021):
The game hasn't been updated in any significant way since 2020, and even though the game is "out of early access" they haven't even changed the description on the store page.
At this point they are just trying to pass it off to sell as much as they can.

The game is by all practical means, abandoned.

EDIT (February 3, 2023):
The devs are updating the game again on PC...out of nowhere? I'll update my review again if it starts to get a lot of changes and updates, but i'll give it time.

This is a loooooooooooooooooooong and only lightly edited review, and I plan on updating it when big things change.


TLDR at the bottom.


Tutorials - Very detailed while also concise enough to be useful. NO SUBTITLES ON THE TUTORIAL VIDEOS! Also, there is no way to skip them.

Covid mode - Nice touch from the devs, very very few games have anything similar

Spell check - The English is okay, but could use a little bit of a touch-up ("graphic" instead of "graphics", "mouse invertation", "limit fps" when given multiple options, etc)
Some warnings given while in sim (collisions, etc) are not in English, although that should just be considered that a bug for now.

There is no true third person camera, only cameras attached to the corners of the train - there is however, a free cam.
Your head clips through the seat in the default interior camera view, and your view rotation is limited to 270 degrees. While realistic in some senses, annoying in others. Especially when looking backwards, which you might do a fair amount.

It isn't possible to change your controls once you are in the sim, very annoying as 90% of the time you need to be able to test that your controls are working. This has been changed, its possible to edit the controls while in-game now.
No way to enable/disable controllers interacting with the sim without unplugging them, very annoying for people who use a wheel often.
That being said, the default control scheme seems to be very well laid out, and the ability to control the tram with the keyboard is a seamless experience.

You can get up and walk around, which is an absolute bonus to any sim game, even if pointless in most.

Unlike games such as OMSI and other simulators with mouse controls, hovering your mouse over a button does not tell you what that button is/does. considering most of the buttons are not in English, you must know fully about the trams, or know German to fully utilize the simulator.
That being said-the full tram is simulated very, very well, 90% of the buttons are clickable and do functions.

Audio - this sounds better than 95% of simulators I know! There are surely going to be bugs and minor issues here and there considering the game was just released at the time of this review, but nevertheless it sounds very good.
there is no chatter going on inside the tram, but i suppose it isn't easy to pack many hours of chatter into a game, high quality, AND keep the file sizes down (though this game ALREADY comes in at a whopping 14.4 GB!)
The doppler effect is incredible, and the sound entering/exiting the tunnels seems nearly perfect to my ears.

YOU CANT OPEN THE WINDOWS OF THE DRIVERS CAB! Open-able, sometimes squeaky windows are a must in any sim. I don't know of anyone who would disagree.

The AI - its okay! it doesn't seem like its totally on rails, the movement is generally smooth, and occasionally they will even cut you off, in a realistic manner by slamming on the brakes as they freak out while you come towards them.
They seem to know when to wait while you're approaching, and seem to know the general road rules. There's a fairly realistic amount of traffic, and you'll have other streetcars/trams in the area aswell, and all over the place. In front of you, behind you, and going the opposite direction.
HOWEVER - There are absolutely NO trucks or large vehicles of any kind, nor are there police cars, ambulances, fire trucks, etc. It would be nice to see these added in the future.
There's also an OKAY number of AI vehicles, though I seriously hope the number will increase in the future, as it gets a little repetitive.
Related to the AI - The traffic signals are exactly as they should be!
as far as pedestrians go - they walk, and don't look like they've pooped themselves. not in a single file line, and at different speeds even. Not much more to be expected of them.

Overall physics - The streetcar shakes around as it should going along the track and especially when going across junctions/points, the tram doesn't accelerate or brake like a fly (though the emergency brake seems a bit excessive), and the streetcar overall feels realistically weighty.
It will accelerate or decelerate on slopes in a very realistic fashion as well.
No, it is not possible to derail or flip the tram, but its a simulator anyways.

Visuals - The game looks very good, as does almost every new game. Its on a similar level to train sim world, though i feel more attention to detail has gone into this game. There are minor issues (such as pedestrians not animating when you're looking in the digital mirrors, but only 50% of the time) however, only very minor.
I do think the game needs a bit of optimization, in the visual department though, my PC is just below recommended spec (GPU only has 6GB of VRAM rather than 8GB and while 80% of the time I was getting consistently acceptable fps, the other 20% it would drop to 20 fps or less.
Currently, there is no weather but there is a day/night cycle. Hopefully there will be weather in the future.

GUI/HUD - There practically isn't one once you are driving, HOWEVER everything you need to know is very clear and obvious, so I feel it isn't very neseccary at this stage in the game, with the content we currently have.

Also, Nvidia Ansel support, awesome.

Challenges - There are multiple challenges, as well as a "hotseat" mode for multiple players so you can play with friends locally, one at a time.

The challenges are as follows:
Door stop - Stop your tram as close as possible to the mark, the furthest distance from the mark loses.
Speed limit - Accelerate to a specified speed without using the tachometer.
Perfect stop - Similar to the door stop challenge, stop the tram as close as possible to the red line.

Content: CURRENTLY, only one tram and one environment. It seems to be their plan to make it possible to mod the game easier, and the community will get tools that will allow them to possibly even get their content officially added into the game.

Multiplayer - No, I don't think this game would have much use for multiplayer anyways though. unlike actual trains where there are multiple roles for the crew and almost never just a driver, trams are generally a one-person operation.

Overall - I think its a very good game so far! A bit pricey, but I think its totally worth it if you want a serious tram simulator, especially if they release a pretty reasonable amount of content for free (or very cheap), and don't adopt cash-grab tactics like other companies. (cough DTG cough)
I think other reviewers are not looking at this in the right view, as they are only looking at the big picture.

TLDR; Buy it if you want a tram sim, don't if you don't. I have hope for this game, and intend to keep it - hopefully this turns a good page for the developer and company to not make this a moneygrab that they will abandon after a year.