Cretaceous Rails – More Than Toys in a Box – Components Overview

A while back we wrote a few articles about an ongoing Kickstarter project called Cretaceous Rails. The game had players creating train lines through a jungle, touring guests and allowing them to see dinosaurs in the wild, capturing dinosaurs, chopping down trees, and more. The game seemed pretty unique in what it was trying to accomplish, but unique doesn’t always mean success. While our review of the game will be a bit yet, let’s run down what you get in the box!

The title of this article is fitting, because you’d be remiss if you opened the box and thought you had a really cool new toy set to play with. Beautifully sculpted dinosaurs in a number of different colors immediately stand out, as do the different colored tourist figures. These are made of really nice plastic, and have a lot more detail than I would have expected. The other plastic bits you will be using are unique train pieces for each player color, and while I found these a bit harder to handle with big fat fingers, there is no denying they are impressive to look at.

The quality of all the other components is fantastic as well. The wooden tree pieces seemed like an odd addition considering all of the plastic included in the box, but I suppose a wooden tree that can stand and lay flat is better than a plastic tree that would be hard to store.

I enjoy that the player boards, train boards, and cards are beautifully detailed – odd art style to be sure, but I enjoy it – and the iconography all around is pretty solid. Cards are explained fairly well, although there was some going back and forth into the rulebook to figure a few things out – once we did, however, it was smooth sailing.

With it’s magnificent table presence, I was concerned that getting this all setup would be so much work – I was pleasantly surprised to see that it wasn’t too bad to table at all, and boy does it look impressive. There’s something about a game that uses dinosaurs that is so appealing. And remember when train games were all the rage and we thought those looked cool? These trains are even cooler.

I might seem like a kid in a candy store when I talk about this game, but honestly it is like a toy in a box. My younger kids would sooner play with all the plastic dinosaurs then let me use them as they were intended. The production here is top notch, and while I had the same worries as other reviewers – that the game was overproduced to make up for potentially lackluster gameplay – the few games I’ve played so far are telling me one thing: Cretaceous Rails is one of the best games of 2025. Book it.