Recently, RPS has seen a mighty renaissance of train game reporting. Look to east, and you will find James doing locomotive kickflips in Denshattack, a J-pop stunt racer turbocharged by the hope of a better world. Look to west, and you'll witness Julian bopping bandit Pullmen in Fogpiercer, or chuffing gaily between the plumpest asteroids in Profits 2167.
I think of Julian whistling betwixt his meteors as I peer from my lookout tower in Trainwatch, a game about a heartbroken alcoholic seeking purpose in a remote and humiliating, dead-end job. I think of James and his funky ramen express as I cradle a microwaved lasange in the canteen, trying to muster the self-esteem necessary to push the button upstairs that will stop any rogue pedestrians getting demolished by the 11.11pm from Richmond.
The trains are not for me. My lot is merely to close the crossing when ordered by the big red phone, and watch the joyous metal brutes thunder past to happier places, while trying not to collapse from exhaustion or delirium born of repeatedly failing to wash my hands. If I have time between button presses, I'll phone home and try to shore up my marriage. Perhaps I'll water my pot plant, which is secretly also my marriage. Perhaps I'll play that Labyrinth game on the office computer, once it's done downloading. Or maybe I'll go visit that weird guy who lurks behind the tower – that chortling beardo in blue robes, who urges me to listen for secrets whispered through the roaring of the trains.
Trainwatch is the work of Harvester Games, founded by Remigiusz Michalski – creator of Adam Smith and Sin Vega favourite The Cat Lady, among other creepy point-and-clickers. I haven't played any of those, so instead, my initial, vaguer clump of references was "what if Wes Anderson made a Silent Hill game. With trains."
The game centres on a landscape view of your lookout tower, jutting from foggy wasteland alongside the crossing gate: it looks so narrow from the front as to be uninhabitable. The handful of rooms inside are similarly viewed side-on or in elevated cutaway, creating a sense of dollhouse symmetry. But then some interaction or event flicks a switch in Troy's burdened brain, and the camera crooks over alarmingly, much as it did in that first alleyway from the very first Silent Hill. Egad, now we're cooking with charcoal!
I confess, I wasn't much drawn by Trainwatch's Sad Husband premise, but I was sold on the presentation immediately, and I'm steadily warming to the game's blend of mystery and mundanity. The landscape is a lot roomier than might be apparent if you fixate on the railway running through it – indeed, the developer calls it a "semi-open world". There are trees and buildings and all manner of peculiar spaces, buried in the mists. The challenge is to investigate them without missing the ringing of the big red phone.
In broad strokes, Trainwatch is a mix of life sim, adventure and time management game. Each shift, you have to ensure you close and open the gates according to the timetable. The game scores you on your alacrity – a condescending slap in the face, given that it also characterises you as a glorified monkey, soon to be replaced by computers (a weary authorial nod to present-day generative AI angst, I guess).
You also need to manage Troy's stamina, replenished by eating or drinking coffee, and keep tabs on his sanity, bolstered by doing hopeful things such as phoning his estranged wife at the agreed time. If you get too low on either stamina or sanity, the view will bleach to a bloodshot haze, and you won't be able to complete tasks such as using the computer, opening the fridge – which, unconstructively, is full of beer – or even pressing the button that closes the crossing. Failure to close the crossing won't necessarily get anybody killed, because this is a backwater, but fatalities seem inevitable if you keep pushing your luck beyond the opening hour.
Having given you the simplest of schedules, Trainwatch then tries to make following it impossible. The immediate obstacle is Troy himself, who begins the game as a wreck, scarcely able to unclog a sink, and is promptly required to work a double shift, after his deceptively jovial colleague Bob has an accident on the stairs. Some tutorial!
The longer term strain is, of course, all the other things you might want or need to do that take you further and further away from the tower. There's a boarded-up well that's crying out for a crowbar. There's a rusty fishing pool in one direction, and an ominous gated-off siding in the other. There are puzzles involving key codes and objects you'll want to incinerate, for some reason. There's also the weirdo in blue, who presses you to unlock the "Control Room" and become a "Better Man".
How much is supernatural, and how much is Troy having a rough one remains to be seen, but I imagine much of the eerieness will tie back to his drinking problems and his failing marriage. You'll meet a bunch of eccentric locals, including the perhaps inevitable passenger in a deserted station, waiting for a last service that will never arrive. Helping them may also help Troy find his way towards the happiest of the game's multiple endings.
It's too early to really comment on the writing, but I'm not finding this as mawkish and heavy-handed as it could easily have been, given the plot setup. Mostly that's because it's skewing functional – the script consists of stark little instructions and observations with highlighted words, reminiscent of older videogames in the sense of having less screen estate for text. Troy's chats with his wife Agatha are longer-winded, but we aren't talking paragraphs of self-reflection.
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