I love immersive job sims, so this was right up my alley! Firstly, the visuals are AMAZING. I can't believe you guys got such a nice looking world and train interior in just four days! Next off, I appreciate the constant back and forth between keeping your engine and heater fueled, checking for obstructions, and taking it all in. Unfortunately, taking it all in got me killed twice, as I froze to death each time I was admiring the bleak, white void around me. The freezing overlay was too easy for me to ignore while using the binoculars, so I got caught by surprise both times. Perhaps a shivering sound, or a flash of red to indicate you're in immediate danger would help communicate how close to the threshold you are at that point. Otherwise, this is an awesome entry to the jam, and I'd genuinely pay money to see a fully realized version of it! Great work!
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STRAIN's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Style | #58 | 4.588 | 4.588 |
| Overall | #472 | 3.902 | 3.902 |
| Creativity | #1043 | 3.765 | 3.765 |
| Enjoyment | #1464 | 3.353 | 3.353 |
Ranked from 34 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
How does your game fit the theme?
The train your drive is built to scale and you make it bigger as you progress
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Comments
Hey thank you so much for the kind words! Really appreciate all the feedback and glad that you liked the game!
We do plan some edits and adding more feedback of course, just did some post0jam update on the game and fixed a bunch of bugs, will add more feedback on the freezing effect as well very soon. Hopefully will make it into a full release some day :)
So immersive, and looks great. Awesome stuff.
I think the brake didn't work for me, or maybe it was supposed to have a slow start, not sure. Minor issue.
This is amazingly well realised given 96 hours! The grimy visuals and the way you interact with your environment makes it feel very physical and tactile. I also really liked the sound FX and mixing, it may be my mind playing tricks on me but I like the detail of the furnace playing a sound effect when full! Overall the gameplay and presentation marry well to achieve that feeling of long stretches of mundanity broken up by emergencies in a cold world.
I only have minor issues: the collision seems a bit finicky and there was one time I got stuck on the pipes and had to restart (could extend collision above them or just remove their collision), and there wasn't good feedback on the brake lever. I wasn't even entirely sure which position was 'on' or 'off' haha, just needs a sound effect and some screen shake.
Hey thanks for the feedback! To be honest we didn't think of adding a sound effect for the full tank on the furnace but it is such a great idea that I'm going to steal it haha
For the bugs and feedback on the brake, we are aware of them, just didn't have time to finish everything. The scope was way too big for a jam game so a lot of stuff are incomplete unfortunately. For example there is a system to alert the player before getting to an obstacle on the road which wasn't completely finished. Hoping to work more on the game after the jam and fix all those things :)
As everyone has already said, the visuals and atmosphere are terrific. I really like the gameplay of resource management using physical instruments in the world. My small suggestions: allow the player to turn off the tv once you've heard everything (or only play the same thing a handful of times), and decrease the time between events/stations. Really cool game!
Wow, such a good game in game jam! I really like the visuals and tone of this game. Really reminds me of classic like Iron Lung. I like all those extra details such as there being so much snow that it goes up to high voltage lines or how there those eldritch abominations in the distance or tv playing in the background. In terms of feedback I found two bugs. One is that stepping sounds are not turned off while looking through binoculars and second is that for some reason "player becomes tall" and it becomes harder to go through door. Also I am a little bit confused about ending. Why the two choices are :go outside and freeze, but save the city or blow up everything up. Though maybe I have missed something. But overall in terms of quality, this game is definitely up there in top games of this jam. Good work.
Thank you very much for the feedback, glad to hear you liked the game! :)
We know about the bugs, but there was simply not enough time to fix them unfortunately, hoping to work more on the game later.
For the ending, I think we had to be more clear what is happening. As the story goes you think that you're transporting an atomic reactor to save the last city of your country. However, the truth is that you're carrying a bomb to the last city of the country you're in war with. It had to be clear that you've reached not your own country but the other one, but we ran out of time at the end. Hoping to fix it later.
The game Looks awesome, it looks and feels good and that is something hard to do. I will like to see this on steam!
I'm so curious on how you made this ?? Like what's shader did you use ?? It's looking amazing, the gameplay was as well super good !! I'm so impressed by your game !
Hey thank you! Glad you liked it! :)
So the coding is done by MrEliptik, all the credit goes to him. It is a dither shader + posterize shader + scale down shader. I believe you can find all on godotshaders.com
For the graphics, I used 128x128px textures and set the image mode to nearest to get the sharp pixelated look :)
This was fantastic!
So much style and personality, from the propaganda new reports to the giant sea creatures appearing on the tracks.
Really impressive how much you were able to achieve within the jam period, but would love to see it fleshed out a bit more in a full release.
extremely stylish, very cool shader/terxtures/models. I’m not even a fan of PS1 style graphics like this and found it appealing visually.
the big monsters are creepy/mysterious and left to imagination.
would be nice to have some reason to not overfill the furnace (pressure buildup or something like that) and the upgrades felt a bit irrelevant (I’m sure they would be more interesting if you guys had a bit more time to work on it).
given more time would be cool to have the propaganda screen announce either weather changes or perils ahead.
and of course, chooooo! choooooooo!
Thank you for your comment Zaft!
You’re right, I think we have a good foundation but the mechanics definitely need some polish and the overheating mechanic is an interesting one, thanks for suggesting!Propaganda needs to be much more important and we have a lot of ideas for that. The big light at the top of the control room was supposed to light up to show you the obstacles but we didn’t have time.
Choo choo 🚂
Love the aesthetic, and setting (loved the propaganda playing in the background). Gameplay was nice and simple (once I properly understood what I was doing). The visuals for all the various things that we have to look out for were great, I'm big fan of putting things like health bars into the game world rather than a HUD. My only gripe is that I ran into a bug where I became one with the train window, and could not escape, and froze to death. Which is not a great to a day of training. Would love to see this expanded on.
Love the vibes, make me think of SnowPiercer movie/ Show.
Had a cool "feature" thoo, where I lost my leg (only able to see the front if I jump on the command board, I laught so hard ! it made the game loop more chalanging xD
I didn"t follow much the dev unfortunatly (had to work on my entry ^^")
Nice take !
this game is OOZING visual style and atmosphere! loved every moment.
bit of a bug report, while I was being reckless doing train conductor stuff, I manage to straight up walk through the front window and fall into the void. hope this gets fixed in a full version because I would LOVE to see more of this.
I had a lot of fun freezing to death (100% serious). I missed out on the craze of Iron Lung, which I saw you mentioned below was an inspiration of sorts. So, I'm really glad that this is the kind of game I get to try blind - and I really like it! I'm surprised at how much went into this. Please consider doing a full version with some of the polish, etc, that comes with a longer and less time constraint project.
Hey thanks for playing and glad to hear that you liked it!
Yes iron lung is one of my personal favorite games :) We will most probably work on the game and turn it in it a finished project some time in the future, we had so many things in mind that we couldn't implement, so hopefully we can work on it more later.
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