Thomas & Friends: Wonders of Sodor on PlayStation 5 is a railway simulation game that is — quite bizarrely — built specifically around the Thomas & Friends license, using the same underlying technology as Dovetail’s Train Sim World series.
It’s developed by Dovetail Games in collaboration with Mattel and released on PS4/PS5 (as well as Xbox and PC). Structurally, Thomas & Friends: Wonders of Sodor is a single‑player game that lets you drive and ride trains, walk around Sodor on foot and experience a set of familiar stories as well as freeform exploration. If that sounds like your idea of a nightmare, then read on, because Thomas & Friends: Wonders of Sodor is better than you might think.
Thomas & Friends: Wonders of Sodor is organised into four main modes. Story Mode presents a series of narrated scenarios where you control Thomas and other engines through self‑contained stories from the books, performing tasks like shunting unruly coal wagons, performing passenger runs, and making simple deliveries. Timetable Mode lets you pick a character and run scheduled services “for a day in the life” of that engine, choosing specific services from a timetable and driving them from start to finish. Explore Mode opens the island up, allowing you to freely walk, ride, or drive around Sodor without strict objectives. Finally, the Shunting Challenge mode gives you puzzle-like tasks where you must rearrange Troublesome Trucks into a specified order in as few moves as possible.
Mechanically, Thomas & Friends: Wonders of Sodor is a mildly simplified train simulator. You control acceleration, braking, direction, and basic cab functions, obey signals and speed limits, and follow route markers to reach stations and yards. On occasion, either manually by getting out of the train or by using the map interface, you’ll need to interact with points or similar within the environment.
Thomas & Friends: Wonders of Sodor uses the Train Sim World tech, so trains have weight, momentum, and basic physics, and you operate them from a first‑person or external camera. At the same time, controls are pared back compared to full‑fat train sims: there are fewer systems to manage, and the interface is designed to be readable and usable by younger players, with clear prompts and large on‑screen indicators.
I had a few issues with the controls and the camera that felt a bit like bugs to me, but as I’ve not played many other train simulators (and definitely not Train Sim World) it’s possible I am just missing a trick. For starters, the camera occasionally seems to get stuck either in first person or outside the train view. This is usually OK if it’s outside and it sorts itself out, but when stuck in first person, I occasionally overshot stations or points sets. This leads to a second problem in the scenario based modes where failure (ie an overshoot) results in a lot of loading and redoing in what is generally quite a slow-paced and laborious game. If you’re after fast-paced rewards, you won’t find them here.
Content‑wise, Thomas & Friends: Wonders of Sodor includes a selection of iconic engines and locations from the series. You can drive Thomas, Percy, Gordon, Emily, Diesel and many others, with James available as an add‑on or via the Deluxe Edition. Key locations like Tidmouth Sheds, Knapford Station and familiar countryside stretches of Sodor are represented as a continuous 3D environment you can traverse by rail or even on foot if you wish. There are eight stories in the standard release, with additional stories tied to James in the Deluxe Edition, and the non‑story modes reuse the same map and trains for more open play. As a Thomas fan in my childhood, I enjoyed some of the familiar stories — such as the one where Thomas ends up with fish in his water tank!
On PS5, the game runs with higher resolution and smoother frame rates than last‑gen versions, with loads of draw distance and really good looking, solid trains. Visually, Thomas & Friends: Wonders of Sodor aims for a bright, stylised realism: engines and locations are recognisably Thomas, but rendered with more detail and lighting than I was expecting. Audio is fully voiced, with narration and character voices guiding you through stories and giving context to your tasks which I loved experiencing with my youngest child — even though I will say that she had no patience for the actual gameplay.
In practice, the experience sits somewhere between a children’s character game and a light train sim. The structure and presentation are clearly aimed at younger Thomas fans with short stories, simple objectives and friendly narration — while the underlying controls and rules (signals, speed limits, route following) come from a more serious simulation background that is moderately difficult to process and which certainly requires patience. That means children can drive their favourite engines around Sodor, complete jobs, and explore freely, but they still need to pay attention to basic railway rules to avoid failing scenarios.
Taken purely on its own terms, Thomas & Friends: Wonders of Sodor is a factual, feature‑complete package: a single‑player, Thomas‑themed train simulator with pleasingly distinct, a modest but focused set of stories, and a fully explorable Sodor built on established sim tech. Whether it works for a given household will depend on how much its audience enjoys the combination of gentle Thomas storytelling with relatively structured, rule‑driven train operation. As you might expect, the kids can enjoy the ride, but it will probably take an adult to drive the train!
Thomas and Friends: Wonders of Sodor is available now for PC, as well as select Xbox and PlayStation consoles.
