Endless Rails Steam Demo Review
Verdict: Play
A Bullet Fest bullet heaven where you are the train, merge flatbed cars for more gun slots, and fly a drone blob while p
Everything is better with trains. Even bullet heaven.
Endless Rails is from Studio Monoblok. You defend a convoy rolling through a monster wasteland, shop at stations, merge cars, and keep rolling until the engine dies. I played about an hour during Bullet Fest on mouse and keyboard. My verdict is Play.
Endless Rails is a Play if Bullet Fest has you browsing bullet heavens and you want one with actual rails on the poster. It is not a train management sim. It is a loud, readable convoy defense toy with room to grow. Try the demo on Steam if merging gun cars while a drone blob mops up pterodactyls sounds fun.
Pros
- Merge-by-level car system stacks weapon slots without blowing past the cart cap once you understand it
- Drone blob versus train-mounted modules creates a real defense tradeoff each run
- Readable chaos: minimal art, strong feedback, damage numbers, and blood without losing track of threats
- Ice tower plus drone focus and station shopping give the loop more depth than a generic survivor clone
- Fixed rails add a clear defensive line that bullet heavens usually lack
Cons
- Wave Eleven boss nested spawns can overwhelm the screen hard if your build is not ready for the spike
- Long convoys reduce train speed to picking sacrificial cars rather than meaningful dodging
Trains on the box, bullet heaven on the tracks
The hook is stupid and it works. I grabbed the demo because Bullet Fest had me trying bullet heavens and this one put turrets on wagons. You are not a survivor with guns. You are a train on a fixed line while red pterodactyl-headed things dive the convoy.
WASD moves your floating drone squad as one blob. They can carry a shotgun, rifle, or SMG. Arrow keys throttle the train forward or back to dodge. Each flatbed car holds weapon modules. Merge two level-one cars into level two and you unlock more slots without exceeding the cart cap. I thought matching weapons were required to merge. They are not. Just the level. That self-inflicted confusion made my first runs harder than they needed to be.
As a Bullet Hell on rails and an Action game in the station-to-station loop, it reads closer to survivor chaos with a train skin than a train sim. That is fine if you know what you are downloading.
Stations, modules, and the ice-plus-drone build
Between waves you hit stations and spend coins on new cars, weapons, repairs, or sells. Each stop is the Roguelike layer where you buy, merge, repair, or sell before the next wave. Direct modules include a flamethrower, lightning tower, and frost flamethrower. Support pieces matter: plutonium and nuclear waste shrink range on nearby cars but boost damage. Radar raises neighbour health. Every car has its own health bar. Lose a car, lose that weapon. Lose the engine, run over.
My best runs used one ice tower to slow enemies, then stacked drones to pick off priorities. There is a real choice between roaming drones that cannot take damage but leave the train exposed, versus loading the cars with flamethrowers and frost so the convoy defends itself. Upgrades like the Molecular Modifier raise max cart count so weapon count can snowball.
Combat stays readable despite minimal art. Numbers pop, blood splatters, lasers streak, and I could still track what killed me. One enemy type must die fast or it spawns mini mobs that flood the screen. Kill the parent first.
Speed, walls, and different runs
Train speed only mattered while my convoy was short. At four or five cars the line was so long that dodging barely helped. I mostly chose which module I was okay sacrificing. Trying to weave actually got me hit more.
Runs ended in different places. One death card showed Station Ten, about fifteen minutes in, and over fourteen hundred kills. Another run I could not clear Wave Eleven. That boss nests spawns inside spawns until the map crowds. That was my wall.
The linear track is a strong Tower Defense constraint in a bullet heaven wrapper. You always know where the train is going, so defense is about line coverage instead of kiting in circles. Mouse and keyboard felt intuitive. I did not try controller.
Developer: Studio Monoblok
View on Steam
Watch the video review: YouTube
Tags: Bullet Hell, Roguelike, Action, Tower Defense, Indie, Incremental, Arcade, Survival
Appears in
- Steam Next Fest June 2026: Thousands of games are expected during Steam Next Fest June 2026, 15–22 June. This collection gathers the Steam demos I have already reviewed that are entering the fest and earned a Play verdict. Full write-ups are linked below after real play sessions. Junkyard Stories: Rebirth, Endless Rails, and Field of Heroes are in so far. More get added as I work through the lineup during fest week.
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