Of course, this hits the one evening in a long while where I'm legitimately distracted with something else...

Holy moly, that's unexpected! I emailed developers at least twice over the years about next DLCs, cause the game is ridiculously fun, i never got any reply. And yet here it is! Awesome!

Missing promo link:
https://www.gog.com/promo/20220511_train_valley

• $1.49 • -85% • Train Valley
• $6.74 • -55% • Train Valley 2
+ DLCs

Still holding three world records from stage one. Tabletop fun for trains lovers. And then, this dlc...

I could never finish Train Valley 1. Eventually the puzzles just got too specific, and failure created too long to try again. I liked it, up to that point. But I never went to TV1 because I couldn't finish TV1.

Does TV2 improve considerably over TV1, or is it more of the same?

@developers

Hello, second class customer in here .

1, Gog version : no 10 % off discount for the newest DLC
2, Gog version : no level editor
3, Gog version : can't download any custom Train Valley 2 content from the steam workshop

Why ?

I never got very far in Train Valley the first. The second was ridiculous fun though. It's a very different game with a different kind of puzzles. The first expansion is kinda a merge of TV2 with some aspects of TV1.

TV2 is a different game. You no longe have random stations, and it is not longer about getting the right train the to right station. Instead it is more of a puzzle game, each city need x amount of resources to end the game. you need to conect cities to the places where the recources are made. the cities provide workers to the places. you then get production chans, for example you need to cut down wood (so send workers to woodmill) and iron (send workers the mine) then semd iron ore 9and workers) to the ironmill, before sending wood, iron and workers to the tool factory. Then send the tools to the city to end the game. To do this, you need to build the railroad network (you do not have enough mony to do so from the start, and need to plan) and manage the train on the network so they don't crash, get to the place they need to be and so on.

I liked both TV1 and YV2, but they play very differently. The Passenger Flow DLC for TV2 makes it similar to TV1.

I haven't played TV1, but I just finished TV2 base game last week (so great timing on this DLC release! I think I'll pick up both) and I'd definitely recommend it. Some of the levels can be a bit unforgiving if you're going for 5 stars, but if you're just looking for completion then you can screw up pretty badly and still prevail. Going back and revisiting many of the levels that gave me trouble, they feel quite trivial now after having completed Rocket to Mars 5 star, so it does get easier as you make progress.

There are a couple of levels with obnoxious elements. Some levels don't telegraph what they are going to do very well (Antarctica), a couple have "guide-dangit" solutions where something that doesn't look like it should work is actually the intended solution (Radio Telescope FAST), one has an instant lose mechanic (The Long Train), and one has an utterly unfair bonus objective (Kensai Airport; the bonus objective is to never stop trains, but the level itself has environmental disasters. So you know an area of track is about to be destroyed, but you can't stop the train that is barreling towards that area without failing the bonus objective...). However, on the whole I found most levels incredibly fun, fair, and well-designed so a handful of questionable ones in a 50 level roster is not bad at all.

Thanks for the replies. I think I'll check out TV2 (I think I got it on sale same time as TV1 -- it's in my library) to see how I feel about it.

It should be noted that not all of these listed here are so bad. Environmental disasters usually happen at predictable and (for the level) regular intervals. "Do not stop trains" is as far as I remember never coupled with "have no train crashes". "Do not pause" usually also means a much more generous time limit and opening the menu is okay. You cannot give orders like that, but you can catch your breath and scratch your nose. The Long Train is easily one of my least-liked levels but there are quite a few possible uses of extra routes which can mitigate it a bit.

All in a all, I frequently ended up kinda-rage-quitting in a few spots. But then I was back fifteen minutes later.

I tried to get an answer to your questions and some other things which were discussed in the forum.
So I reached out for Discord server of Train Valley and used at [@] to directly address a developer:
* https://discord.com/invite/train-valley
which is the best way to get answers (after my experience - GOG does not even react in months - except
for directly asking to get refund, of cause) - and now due to this heads up they even reacted on GOG forum:
* https://www.gog.com/forum/train_valley/4_missing_achievements_from_passenger_flow
So for future cases - discord has visibility ... GOG is just a merchandising plattform - unfortunately.
I was informed (3:55 AM) via discord by Sergey Dvoynikov,
but concerning the 3 problems it stays as is - as steam code was used - not working with GOG.
I am happy that some developers care enough to find a working solution for GOG ... but in this case
there seems to be no solution. It is up to GOG to change this to help there customers.

For Completeness, the entire message I sent was
(setting the Dev via at [@] to make it better visible - just a hint for others):
~~
jmbtux - Today at 2:40 AM # 12.05.2022
Hi, I own Train Valley 1 with DLC and are now considering to buy
Train Valley 2 on GOG to play it on GNU/Linux, too.
When looking around - on GOG forum and here - there are requests/questions
which seems to have never answered (sorry, if I overlooked them).
@Sergey Dvoynikov could someone please answer the following general questions
so I can put the answers to the GOG forum?
1) The level editor seems missing in GOG version - is there a reason for this -
    or is this feature worked on to come soon?
2) It seems existing custom Train Valley 2 content can not be used with
    GOG version - is this just due to the missing level editor?
3) The latest DLC "Myths & Rails" is on Sale on Steam (-10%) but at full price
    on GOG - just a mistake?
4) There is a forum thread (04. Feb. 2022) about 4 missing achievements linked
    to the DLC Passenger Flow: Tourism Age, Urbanization Age, Alchemist,
    Astrophysicist - is this known - and will it be fixed if this is true?
5) Is there any functionality missing when not using GOG Galaxy?
    It was hinted somewhere about achievements - and GOG does not provide
    Galaxy for GNU/Linux.
I would be happy about these points getting clarified and will share the answers on GOG forum
to inform other gamers.
Many thanks in advance for your help.
Best wishes! JMB
~~

And the entire respons was:
~~
Sergey Dvoynikov - Today at 3:55 AM
1, 2, 5 - there is no steam workshop on gog available, and since
  all the workshop infrastructure is build on top of steam api -
  it is not possible (and won’t be) to use this features on gog.
3 - I believe it’s about shop discount policy, we keep price
  the same everywhere if we able to
4 - probably a bug, will check (edited)
~~

So 3 is strange - if I get it right they want to offer as discount and GOG did not allow it.
So this should really commented by a GOG official ... but this is something I hear a lot,
that problems are just on GOG side after Devs.
So GOG should work better with developers ... to end such discrepancies harming GOG customers.

Environmental disasters are predetermined, happening at exactly the same place at the same time, but this is no help to you when you're first learning the level and haven't played through it in its entirety. The warnings are just too short, by the time the affected area starts flashing to warn that the destruction is imminent there's only enough time to stop trains. Since you can't stop on this level, any train already en-route is dead.

While a train crash isn't automatic failure on Kensai Airport, if it happens early enough it may as well be. Money is super tight on this mission as you need to build lots of bridges, so a single repair can set you back as you can't begin deliveries to certain areas quickly enough. Even small time losses in the early phases of this level are devastating, since the disasters permanent cut off the fastest routes so every delivery you can complete early saves a huge amount of time.

Sure, if you know the level really well you can probably recover from a bad start, but that's the kinda the point: Kensai Airport punishes you for not already being really familiar with the level, and forces a bunch of restarts as a result. On most levels it felt like 5 stars was possible first-try so long as I made the right decisions and didn't make any major mistakes. Kensai Airport and a couple others (like Antarctica) felt like they pretty much forced resets because you had to find things out the hard way, and that usually was enough to put you into 4-star territory so you'd need to restart if you wanted 5-star.

"Do not pause" is one of the easiest bonus objectives. If it weren't for muscle memory that can make you click the pause button without thinking, it would effectively be free.

"Do not have crashes" is usually also free, since a crash is usually going to disqualify you from another objective anyways.

I would recommend to also try TV1. For me it has been a lot of fun and the current price is a really good offer.