It’s been a while since we visited Lucky Train, and there are quite a few new features to talk about. While the gameplay is still very simple, there are more things to do, more ways to interact with your friends, and even some reasonable ways to play solo or with only very few friends.

Original Review: Lucky Train
Game Updated: 10/29/2010

Some of the new updates are improvements to the user interface (and let it never be said that we sneered at UI upgrades – they can make or break a game.) A few that are worth mentioning – you can now distinguish between friends who are playing and those who are not when you send a train, which makes the game much less spammy. There’s a one-click interface to accept all pending train requests and you can see all the details from that screen. And the loading screen is now a newsletter with information about game updates and also your friends’ exploits.

The more exciting improvements change the way you play the game. The largest of these are the new Tasks, which guide you through the various game features and give rewards. They’re not necessarily exciting new things to do, but they do give the otherwise repetitive gameplay some direction. You can visit your friends’ counties now, and get one free “passenger transfer” each day to snag a high-dollar passenger for your own station. And new achievements take advantage of Facebook’s friend information – you can get achievements for sending trains to friends in various different countries (although the USA-Australia one must be quite the feat of engineering.)

A daily “free spin” adds another reason to check in regularly, although most of the rewards are cosmetic. And if you don’t want to hassle your friends, there are now three non-player characters to send trains to, so you can at least have some activity in your station every day even if you aren’t a major traffic hub. This was one of the conceptual weaknesses of the game, and it’s good to see the developers taking steps to shore it up.

Lucky Train is a game with tremendous potential that it’s only beginning to realize. The steady pace of upgrades, and their direction, certainly hint at great things to come. In the meantime, it’s a cute little game ideal for folks who like to decorate villages and uncover easter eggs – the Trick-or-Treaters and other special passengers over Halloween were an excellent example of good, game-enhancing special event features. We’ll be keeping an eye on this one as time goes on – and feel free to send us your trains!