Last updated on January 15th, 2026 at 07:06 am
Railroad Ink Challenge – Board Game Review
Railroad Ink Challenge is a Board/Strategy game from Horrible Games S.r.l., first launched in 16th June 2021.
It’s rated 4+ and currently has 180+ ratings on the App Store.
What Makes Railroad Ink Challenge Stand Out
In Railroad Ink Challenge, you have 7 rounds to make as many points as possible. Roll the dice and draw the routes to connect the exits around your board. Expand your network with railways, highways, and stations to collect points, but you will be penalized for any open connections, so plan carefully! Play solo to improve your best score, or challenge players from all over the world!
HOW TO PLAY
Each round you will have to roll the dice and use the available routes to build your transportation network and connect as many exits as possible. Expand your network to collect points. You’ll also score bonus points for your longest highway and railway, for building into the central spaces of your map, and for completing optional, time-dependent goals before they expire.
You can also connect special structures to your network to trigger their special effects, such as duplicating routes, unlocking powerful special routes, and more. But beware: Try to not leave any open connections, as each one will cost you points at the end of the game.
EXPANSIONS
Forest and Desert expansions add special dice and rules to create even more intricate landscapes for your highways and railways.
MODES
Play solo with random objectives and join the online rankings or challenge players from all over the world with custom game configurations! The online leaderboards (Daily, Monthly, and All-Time) are completely cross-platform!
• The wonderful art of the roll and write game by Marta Tranquilli, fleshed out and digitally enhanced
• Network planning gameplay: try to make the best use of the available routes each round to create the perfect transportation network
• Try to conquer the top of the online leaderboards (Daily, Monthly, and All-Time)!
• Cross-platform, asynchronous multiplayer challenges with your friends!
100% Asynchronous multiplayer challenges
Don’t like to wait while your opponents complete their turn? Fear not! With the 100% asynchronous multiplayer challenges, that is an issue of the past! Play a full game on your own, then post the challenge online! Players from all over the world will be able to play with the same dice and goals you had and try to beat your score! Who’s gonna get the best score?
Railroad Ink Challenge is the official adaptation of the critically acclaimed roll and write game created by award-winning designers Hjalmar Hach & Lorenzo Silva and illustrated by artist Marta Tranquilli.
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IMPORTANT Railroad Ink Challenge requires iPhone 6s, iPad Mini 4, iPad Air 2, iPad Pro, iPad (2017) or later.
This Board game offers engaging gameplay and regular updates for mobile players.
Player Feedback
As a newer release, Railroad Ink Challenge is building its player community. Early feedback suggests .
Recent Updates & Development
Latest Update: 17th December 2025
Recent improvements include:
- security update
Download & Availability
Railroad Ink Challenge is available through the official App Store for iOS devices.
Get Railroad Ink Challenge on App Store
Requirements: Requires iPhone 5s / iPad Air / iPad Air (Cellular) / iPad Mini 2 (Retina) / iPad Mini 2 (Retina, Cellular) / iPhone 6 / iPhone 6 Plus / iPad Air 2 / iPad Air 2 (Cellular) / iPad Mini 3 or later.
Compatible with iPhone and iPad devices.
Player Experience Highlights
Community Insight:
Excellent animations and beautiful art brings the physical game to life. But how could there be no option for river or lake dice.
Its truly a really good game, animations are amazing but overall UX is terrible youre really gotta be using this app for a while to know how to navigate because its the least intuitive thing, its definitely overwhelmed. Found some bugs which are really annoying: 1. If you play with friends, and go to view their board after game (why cant we do this without leaving the game that just finished?), you click on View Bord, then somehow it prompts you to board and Start play button and after you click it, this game gets unintentionally deleted from your history. 2. If you open friends list from our challenges from one of your games, and go to their profile and click X to click it, you cannot quit the friend list view afterwards because its X just gets broken 3. Not a bug but common sense question how am we supposed to see how our friends did on Daily Challenge without clicking through all pages from ranking? It should be the most essential feature, we dont care about global ranking as much as about our friends scores. Nevertheless, great game but still some room for improvement.
It gets compressed on ipad and forced into horizontal orientation.
Gameplay is fun and engaging but the resume game feature just freezes the app. Also wish there were more expansions to play.
We really like this game. And after the updates everything is working just fine. We have already bought all the in-app purchases. No regrets there. But please, please make the placing of tiles optional. Its very frustrating to get a bad roll, and then be forced to use it. Its like a double whammy. We should be able to end a turn with any tiles that we dont want remaining to the side. Those tiles would then be discarded. And that would make sense logically. If we were the president of a railroad company, we would certainly have the power to say, No thanks. We dont want that kind of rail pattern.
Sorry guys, the latest update didnt fix the issue with the in-app purchase for Desert not working at all. It just goes to a white screen with a death spiral in the center. Neither restore nor purchase button do the trick.
Ive been playing for months, tried to play yesterday and our Game Center account no longer worked. Had to log in with our email which reset our history. Not sure we want to play anymore.
We love the physical game so was super excited to get the digital version. Have been trying for multiple days to purchase the desert expansion but it just goes to a loading screen. Have uninstalled and attempted to go through the App Store.
Even with the recent fixes, the resume game feature broken. When selecting the resume game, the screen freezes. The only way out is to hard quit the game. Its not a major deal. Just make sure you complete a game.
Every single time we open the app an error titled No_Error puts us back to the homepage if we try to see our challenges or challenge someone. So frustrating.
Resume game feature is still broken as of Nov 30 2023 update.
Hello. One of our favorite games to play! Own the physical copy and also all the doc for game. Im glad that you guys have a new server up and running but we are having issues when challenging friends. We both have finished multiple games but it still is listed as awaiting results even though the game was finished. We have an iPhone and our friends play on android but we both are seeing the same issue. Only way to make it go away is to delete the match.
It was great. We loved the daily challenge. Please fix it! Thank you for the updates! Look forward for the multiplayer version back online.
The online services went down last fall (September 2022) and havent worked since. Horrible Guild continue to insist they are working on it, and that they will be back up soon. But they give no ETA. Additionally, they had warning long before their previous host stopped their service and dont seem to have done anything to prepare for the transition in advance to prevent this issue. Until the server is back up (if it ever happens) go play this for free on BGA and dont bother with this app.
Not worth buying. The online features do not currently work at all and they have no ETA for when they will work. Is not worth the money until the get the app fixed.
We really enjoyed the daily challenges and then they lost their server and nothing for months, we paid for the game and now we cant enjoy it the way we liked.
It is disappointing after paying for a game to not be able to play it properly. It appears that the developers are aware and have done nothing to correct the problem.
The game worked well until the version 1.5 update. Then it started to occasionally crash to the desktop. Each update since then has made it worse. We can now play one turn. Then when we hit the Confirm button the game crashes. On edit: Ive tried to play a few more games. We refuse to give up because we really enjoy the game when its working. The game crashes randomly. Sometimes its during Turn 1. Sometimes its later. We have activated Battery Saving and Skip Dice Animation. The game still crashes. We are running iOS 12.5.6, which is supposed to be compatible with this app.
We write software for a living and work with servers. It is unacceptable that it has taken a month to fix a server issue. Where is the support for your loyal customers.
Great game. A great adaptation of the bird game, with some fun additions for the app, but also great to still be able to play the base game. Its annoying to not really be able to play offline, but really annoying that you can start and play a full game online, but then get to the end and it wont score it, and then immediately throws out the whole game. Would love to be able to play this offline while flying.
Day 3 or 4 of not being able to connect to the server to play. We loved the game until it stopped working.
We were able to play for awhile, but now we can only play offline, as it says it cant connect to the server whenever we try to log into the Horrible Guild account. We miss the daily challenge.
When you were in the game, it is amazing. Intuitive UX during play, great graphics and sound, and a lot of fun. If you ever lose your password on an ipad, though, you are literally unable to recover. Thats because they send you a recovery link to your email (if you remember the email associated with the account, which it doesnt tell you) but in order to copy the reset key, you need to app switch to your email program at which point Trains Ink does its own restart aaaand now you cant enter the key.
Every time we finish a game theres an issue connecting to the server and we dont get to see our final score.
It was great. We loved the daily challenge. Please fix it.
This games servers have been unreachable for nearly a week. Without them, the game is essentially worthless. We emailed them days ago, no response. Dont waste your money until they fix this.
The game worked well until the version 1.5 update. Then it started to occasionally crash to the desktop. Each update since then has made it worse. We can now play one turn. Then when we hit the Confirm button the game crashes. On edit: Ive tried to play a few more v.3.0.2 games. We refuse to give up because we really enjoy the game when its working. The game crashes randomly. Sometimes its during Turn 1. Sometimes its later. We have activated Battery Saving and Skip Dice Animation. The game still crashes. We are running iOS 12.5.6, which is supposed to be compatible with this app.
Whenever the sun result rolls on the dice in the Desert Expansion, it wont let us slide the confirmation on discarding a special or enduring the effect. Makes that game mode literally unplayable.
It would be extremely useful to see the expansion scoring rules as part of the drop-down general scoring information. We couldnt find a quick reference. In fact we didnt manage to find it at all and had to use an external source. If the info is there it could be made more easily available; if its not there then it needs to be added.
Just bought the forest and desert expansions, but when we opened the app- it still states coming soon. How does that work, or when will they update.
The game is fun and works great when playing the normal game. We had to learn to play by just reading the manual because the tutorial does not let you place the first dice and cannot move on from that action.
Claims to support the mini 2, but only the menus run. Crashes every time we attempt to play the actual game no matter what we set in the options. They should update the store page to indicate DOESNT support iPad mini 2.
Like previous reviewer, the game is unplayable on our IPad Mini 2. Game consistently crashes. We have contacted developers for a fix before we request a refund. Update to previous one star review. We played around with settings and found that game works great on Battery Saving. Update #2 Back to 1 star. Game now constantly crashes when loading since last update. Unplayable. Playing on IPad mini 2,IOS 12.5.5.
We stumbled upon this game, and Im so glad we did. Its perfect for mobile (thank you for making it portrait mode for the phone!). The tutorial is perfect and the rule book is easy to understand. It doesnt take long to learn to play. The design and UI are gorgeous, intuitive. The app also is good on the battery. We appreciate the fair premium price with no ads or IAP. This is how games should be. Thank you developer for this game. We love it! Its easy to pick up and play when you have five minutes, but you keep wanting to play again. Its awesome.
This is a really great game. Very fun! One of those.. "Just one more time" type of games. App is very well constructed, great UI. Plays very well on our iPad ( newer ). Not so great on steam on our older MacBook Pro.
Great implementation, things look a little pixelated here and there but works great. Only downside is the Lush Green is shown with a store icon but we cant figure out how to purchase it.
Pleas add more turns! We swear we fail because theres not enough turns and Im not just bad at the game lol. In all seriousness tho, its addicting super fun once you get the hang of it. Had to go through the tutorial twice to really understand and it. We can see more things are coming soon really excited for a new map. Maybe a randomized placement of special squares?? That would be pretty cool. Great game.
Our cousin bought the physical game at a game store and brought it on vacation. The graphics are beautiful, it was simple to learn and having a different game every time you play made this game addicting. We were glued to it for our entire weekend getaway – literally played it probably 50 times. An offhanded comment led to a search in the App Store for an app version of the game and low and behold we found it! This app adds additional elements not found in the base physical game which is awesome. But it appears that the app doesnt have the lava & meteor expansion dice?? We see the desert & rainforest expansion options are coming soon but what about the others? Any plan to incorporate them into the app? The meteor/lava dice were one of our favorite part of the physical game.
Solid implementation but since we will be mostly playing solo we docked one star because we can't find where it shows us our previous scors. Other roll & writes have this and it doesn't seem like it would be difficult to code it. The long agonizing dice rolls across an black screen is quite annoying also.
Our wife and we have this board game and it was fun to play, but left us a little confused on some of the rules. We downloaded this game to see what we were missing. Anyway, the game is great our only complaint is that there is only an option to play with people you know. We dont know anyone and would love to play with a few people. Our username is LezBreal if anyone wants to add us. An option to play with ransoms would be helpful.
Im a solo player. Really wish that it would rank our scores so we could see our own personal improvements.
The game repeatedly crashes to desktop during the tutorial. Appears to be unplayable on our iPad, even though it comes up as compatible in the store. Will have to file for a refund.
Railroad Ink is one of our favorite roll and write games. This app is a good implementation with some early stages glitches. A couple glitches we experienced; 1. If you exit the game to resume later, your score is reset to zero, even if you are on a later round (example, exit game on round 5 with score 50. You will resume on round 5 with starting score of 0). 2. Issue that prevents us from recalling the placement of a factory generated dice. The dice can be rotated but cant be removed. Regarding experience and levels – it is not clear exactly how to gain experience or how to level up.
We had been thinking about buying the physical version of the game but had never pulled the trigger. So when the App came out, we thought we could give it a try before buying the board version. The App is solid and we love the asynchronous gameplay. We can play with the wife and kids and we can all play at our own pace with no downtime. The game itself is a nice little puzzle as you try to hit goals and leave yourself many options early then rush to close off open ends in the later part of the game. Im not terribly good yet but am having a blast. Two complaints: the tutorial game should not give you achievements. We want high scores to come from our own games. Secondly, the motivations are wonky and we have to turn them off to get the red notification number to disappear. Hope both things are fixed, but neither are enough to deduct a star.
Solid start. Plays smoothly and is very pretty. Primary thing we're missing from our big box is all the expansion dice that really spice up the game and those seem to be coming soon.
This is a great adaptation of the game, but the full screen rolling of dice on a black screen is super jarring and annoying. If you gave us the option to turn this off it would be a 5 star game! Edit: apparently this is only on iPad, so hopefully its just a bug that will get addressed.
User feedback from Apple App Store
App Details
- Version: 3.4.2
- Size: 283.08 MB
- iOS: 15.0 or later
- Languages: EN
- Content Advisory:
- Developer: Horrible Games S.r.l.
Last updated: 17th December 2025 | Genre: Board, Strategy | Developer: Horrible Games S.r.l.