Gilded Rails

Choice of Games LLC

Contains adsIn-app purchases

About this game

It's speed dating for the railway-tycoon monopolist robber baron! To obliterate your competition, you must marry a suitable partner before time runs out.

"Gilded Rails" is a 340,000-word interactive dating-management novel by Anaea Lay, where your choices control the story. It's entirely text-based—without graphics or sound effects—and fueled by the vast, unstoppable power of your imagination.

Some kids get a model train set from their parents—your daddy gave you his railroad line. Find a spouse and you’ll win control of the family business, but fail to marry and you could lose it all! Can you lead the company to greatness and get hitched before time runs out?

Blaze through an epic tale of business expansion, family life, and love in a time when everyone wants more and many wind up with less. How will you choose to run your business? Will you honor contracts and commitments, or betray your enemies and your principles? Are you a natural-born leader, or will your workers laugh at you behind your back? Blow the whistle on corruption in your industry, or unleash your hidden tycoon and rule the railroads!

Just make sure you find a marriage partner along the way, or Daddy might push you out of the company!

• Play as male, female, or non-binary, pursuing men, women, or both.
• Triumph over strikes, sabotage, and social scandal.
• Sharpen your business acumen and connections.
• Choose from eleven romance options! Court everyone from your childhood best friend to the villainous head of a rival company.
• Become the poster child for modern reform, or the bootheel that needs reforming.
• Discover your father's checkered past.
• Embrace your inner robber baron—or Robin Hood.
• Choose between romance and business partnership.
• Pet your kitty.

Ratings and reviews

Gilded rails is pretty sub-par. I can never really tell what kind of impact my choices are and honestly the only interesting part of the game was your cat. Also for a over 300k word CoG title it felt shorter than some 100k word games. The stats seem to have hardly any impact on your choices and can be easily ignored. Romance was really boring with no real attachment to any of the options. Overall it was kinda disappointing all the way through to the end.

I can't wait for the rest of this piece to get published...Oh that's all of it? LAME!! You know how there are those great interactive fiction books where a big part is resource management? Usually, there's a little bit of intro and character development, then a finite amount of time to build up or create something? Then you get to use that something? "See it in action," as it may be. That not this one. This one is 5 resource decision that seem to not affect anything and then... nothing. You don't get any form of evaluation or look forward or even a pass/fail. All the effort spent managing the important sounding budget nets you zero story. It feels like there's ½ of a story that didn't make deadline here.

I definitely wouldn't market this as a romance story. As many others pointed out, the romance aspect is extremely brief and underwhelming, and is sure to disappoint those that bought the game hoping to read romance. I actually liked the game most of the time, but it's too difficult and short. My biggest complaint is that this story actually has a great plot and design, but it doesnt go far enough. There are so many great ideas and events in the story, but it doesnt explore them to their full extent, or anywhere near it. I know some didnt like the inventory/stat style of the game, but I found it to be enjoyable and unique... but again, it cannot be used to its full extent. For example, one of the upgrades you can do takes 3 weeks, and the game only lasts 5, so you cant get a return on that (large) investment. The author crafted a cast of awesome, interesting, unique characters and then... pretty much threw them in the trash. This just feels like a game that could have been great, but hit a time constraint and was published when it was 35% done. So much potential, an experience that is pretty much just okay. I did enjoy the author's voice and humor, though. I would give them another chance in the future for sure; they're creative and talented.

What’s new

Fixed a bug (for real, this time) where the app could lose progress when the app goes into the background. If you enjoy "Gilded Rails", please leave us a written review. It really helps!