Trainwatch – alone with your thoughts on a railway line to nowhere
The flat routines of a dead end railway job screen out an approaching menace in a quietly intriguing game from the indie developer of Cat Lady and Lorelai
Lonely jobs have provided excellent material for independent video games over the years. From Papers, Please to Firewatch to The Stanley Parable, players have been happy to spend hours dwelling in depressing cubicles or rural hideaways, usually because there is an intriguingly hidden point to it all.
In Trainwatch, a character named Troy has taken a seemingly godforsaken job as a railway worker in an unnamed desolate backwater. His main task over the course of a single month is to manage a level crossing, closing the gate whenever a train comes, while also carrying out daily chores such as cooking and washing. It sounds serene, but Troy is also running away from something. The other stipulations are that he stays sober and calls his wife every night. And there is something lurking in the fog at the edges of the fields – one day he must face it.
Trainwatch is the sixth game from solo developer Remigiusz “Rem” Michalski (AKA Harvester Games), and was inspired by a childhood memory. “We used to live near the railway tracks,” he says. “Every night, I’d hear that thundering hum of trains in the distance and see their lights moving slowly in the darkness outside my window. I found that oddly comforting. The world seemed dead and empty, and that train rolling through the night was the only sign of life happening out there.”
Michalski describes the game as a time-management mystery adventure, which sounds cosy, but the game’s muted colours and uneasy sense of dread suggest otherwise. Previous games, such as Cat Lady and Lorelai, have explored mental anguish and isolation, and it seems that Trainwatch will continue this theme. “I think most of us are lonely, guilty, or isolated in one way or another,” says Michalski. “We all have our demons living deep inside, and we rarely show them to anyone. Most of the time we don’t even want to acknowledge their existence ourselves.”
While you’re running the signal room and carrying out daily tasks of self-care, there are also chances to explore nearby buildings and meet the inhabitants of this strange wasteland, some of whom you’ll have the chance to help. So is there a redemptive arc beneath the rather bleak overtones of Trainwatch? Michalski suggests there is: “It’s a game about trying to dig ourselves out of a hole, re-evaluating what our priorities are, fixing our lives while having a million things on our shoulders all at the same time. And while it touches on many difficult topics, it does so with a sprinkle of dark humour. ”
When asked if there were movies or novels that inspired the game’s look, setting and themes, Michalski makes his own personal discovery. “Now that I think about it … I guess being an indie game developer is a little like being a Gatekeeper in Trainwatch. Sure, there’s my wife, pottering about in the flat, the kids getting home from school, talking with excitement … but I spend most of my time here, in my little studio, alone, pushing buttons. So really, the main influence for Trainwatch comes from my secluded life in a tiny Polish town. Thanks for making me realise that!”
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