The Final Station review – next stop: post-apocalypse

Looking at tinyBuild Games' publishing portfolio, you can see some good, by indie standards, productions – among them little gems like the very good Punch Club, the wacky SpeedRunners or the rather unusual Spoiler Alert. Another title to come out under their label is The Final Station – the debut project from the Russian studio Do My Best Games. It seemed like – mainly due to the fresh idea for bilinear gameplay embellished with arcade-like visuals – this could be the most interesting independent productions available in Steam’s offer at the end of the summer holidays.

Hear My Train A Comin

"Plot is not that important in a platform game", I repeated under my breath like a mantra when starting a new game in The Final Station. And yet it had me – I have to admit that the dream-like yet dark prologue was a very pleasant surprise. Several questions immediately popped up in my mind: "Where are we?", "What are those monsters?", and finally, "Who's the mysterious fellow with the shotgun?". This rather intriguing stage, however, is interrupted by a cliché, the worst you can encounter in a game – the sound of an alarm clock reminding the protagonist that it's high time they went to work. This plot device is badly overstaying its welcome, at least in my book – fortunately the creators, learning from Hitchcock himself, made sure that from that moment on the tension was constantly rising.

The main protagonist of the game is Edward Jones, train driver of an experimental locomotive, side number "BELUS-07". We take its reins 106 years after a mysterious event called the First Visitation. During the event space capsules began falling from the sky, soon starting to leak mysterious gas; the gas had the curious effect of enhancing the minds of a very limited percentage of human population. For most people, however, the only outcome was transformation into terrifying bloodthirsty zombie-like creatures. Fearing a new threat, one mentioned most often by NPCs of unsound mind, the government decided to implement The Guardian Project, financed from the citizens' purses.

Do you like trains, Bill?

The main theme employed by The Final Station is – similarly to Transarctica, one of the inspirations for the team at Do My Best Games – journey by train. Our train turns out to be the only hope, both for The Guardian Project and the remaining human survivors. The whole story – its further development, ending and some interesting subplots – needs to be pieced together from the information we collect along the way like a puzzle. The facts we learn are random, always coming from one of the four available sources: NPCs encountered on the way or traveling on board of our train, other operators and mechanics contacting us through our on-board computer, an online chat app modeled after Facebook, and finally from notes, letters and other documents found in abandoned buildings. If you like searching for collectibles, I can see a smile growing on your face already. There's also something for the fans of conspiracy theories – the game's ending fails to offer a detailed explanation for a number of essential topics, for which the Russian team, unless they plan to create a follow-up, deserves a wolf ticket.

How should I say it... The chances of Edward getting a genuine promotion in the near future are rather slim.

Swing Low Sweet Chariot

The Final Station is a typical representative of two-dimensional platformers, where proven – and at the same time reliably implemented – genre solutions are intertwined with gameplay mechanics added to spice up the fun. The game consists of two alternating level types – on-foot exploration of subsequent sites, and travelling between them using the train. Each of the levels, except for the prologue and epilogue, takes place either on a railway station or along the tracks connecting two stations. This allows us to visit locations such as an abandoned military HQ, snow-covered mountains, an urban metropolis, or a sun-bathed desert.

This gentleman doesn't want to spoil the plot – and neither do I, even though this screenshot is relevant to it.

All these places – and there's much more of them in the game – are done very nicely using pixel art. What's more, some interesting effects, temporarily obscuring the action of the game, serve to add even more charm to it – a newspaper carried by the wind or cars passing by are not an uncommon view on the screen. One more thing to add flavor to the setting are the interactive details appearing on each level – for example, in a supermarket we can pull down goods from store shelves, and sniping a bird before it flies away will win us an achievement on Steam. Still, the most vivid element are the background graphics when traveling by train – and although we have very little time to admire them, landscapes showcasing destroyed cities, sunsets, or a lighthouse are doing their best to burn their pixelated impression in our memory.

Nothing wrong. For now...

Our protagonist can’t simply ride past a station on his way – and for several important reasons. First of all, once we get out of the train, it will be put under lockdown by a special train dock. If we want to continue our journey, we must first find a four-digit lock release – generated randomly, leaving us no option to write it down and use later on in order to speed up our playthrough. In search of the codes we will explore open spaces and interiors of various buildings – and here comes a certain tricky curiosity that affects the gameplay. All the rooms which we have not yet visited are shrouded in "fog of war". This means that as long as we do not open the door leading to a section of the building, its contents will remain hidden from us. Several times, due to my overly nonchalant attitude, a flock of aggressive dark creatures has managed to make me jump on my chair and finish off my character, forcing me to load the last checkpoint.

It should be mentioned, however, that the game – which can be completed in 5 to 7 hours – despite some very good moments, begins to wear us down halfway through due to the monotony of the gameplay. It is not surprising though, because the level pattern is almost identical every time: we go right from the train station until we reach the end of the level and then take the underground tunnels (where in most cases we find our precious piece of paper with a code written on it and a dozen or so opponents) back to the station.

Shouldn't have come here...

If we have to roam around the station either way, we may as well take care of the secondary goal of the game – finding as many survivors as we can and transporting them to one of the main towns on our route. Thorough exploration of a single site should take us no more than 15 minutes – no problem with reserving some time for risking our neck for NPCs before we leave. For escorting those stragglers to the next bigger city we will get, aside from the usual dopamine bonus for being a nice guy, profits in the form of cash, ammunition, or even weapon mods. A walk outside of the train is also a great opportunity to deal with the constant shortage of food and medicine kits – without either of them the passengers on the train are certain to perish during the long journey. Of course, the medicine supply is also for us to use. This particular element is very well-balanced – we are able to complete each level without spending a single medicine kit, but if we decide to use them, our passengers will have to get by without (hint: they won't).

A certain absurdity needs pointing out though: the lack of choice whether we want to let a survivor on our train or not – after all, our supply of medicine and food is rather limited. Here's what happens instead: the people we encounter ask us about the train meet with our (apparently) meaningful silence to which they happily respond with something akin to "See you on board then!" – and off they go. The following "moral choices" concerning supply distribution are virtually non-existent, because in a post-apocalyptic scenario nothing beats healthy pragmatism – food goes to the guys for whom safe arrival is worth at least 250 bucks and a weapon upgrade. Natural selection is merciless to guys who can barely scrape together 20 dollars in used coins. While an AAA game could depict such a decision in a way that would make us hesitate to make the call – because realistic-looking characters and outspoken companions are somewhat easier to get attached to – here, the "decision" concerning the life or death of a clump of pixels is hardly difficult – and a reasonable motivation to even try to save them could only be provided by Steam achievements.

Nothing to see here, just social Darwinism at work.

Once we find a code and release the lock, we get to ride our train to the next station. Which, contrary to what you might think, is a very important part of the game. Edward's locomotive is an experimental type, which means that it comes with some yet-to-be-ironed-out technical issues, which in time increase overall energy consumption. The number one priority for the player is to supervise individual subsystems so as not to cause an overheat of the locomotive's battery. Maintenance of failing components is done by playing intuitive and reasonably-designed mini-games, which reduces the energy consumption of individual systems. However, if we ignore this threat, it will butcher the locomotive's engine, resulting in a power failure of the ventilation system in the passenger car, and our precious survivors will be sent off to a better place.

And here's where a certain problem comes into play – the most annoying blemish the player has to grapple with in this production from Do My Best Games – during NPC conversations we are forced to deal with their needs and train repairs simultaneously, effectively making it impossible to focus on the dialogues appearing in the speech bubbles. To make matters even worse, some of the mini-games completely obscure them. I'm not buying any arguments defending this mechanism – this element of the train levels was, frankly speaking, botched, because by hindering the readability of the comments served by the NPCs, it prevents the player from acquiring plot-critical information and enjoying the little tidbits dropped by the passenger. I could also take some space to complain about the not always legible font, but I rarely had time to focus on it – because of the mini-games I was dealing with – so I'm just going to let this one slide.

It seems the inefficiency of the Guardian Project irritates some people...

As soon as we deal with possible equipment failures, we should take care of the passengers we have picked up along the way. We have to watch out for the passengers' level of hunger and health, and – depending on our good will – replenish them with our own stocks of medicine and food. Admittedly, it can be interesting to watch the surviving NPCs in panic mode when one of the passengers dies, but it is also worth delivering them to their destination alive – aside from the usual perks, the game rewards us with interesting dialogues, in which the pixel fellows comment on the current situation. Sometimes we also go to the driver's cab – there is communication equipment there, which allows us to contact other railway employees who can inform us about the situation on other routes.

If I fix the ventilation, I can't pick up his dialogue. If I pick up his dialogue, I'll be unable to fix the ventilation.

There are few weapons in The Final Station – we can eliminate enemies using a handgun, a double-barrel shotgun, and in later stages of the game also with a rifle. The UI informs us – aside from our health and the number of medicine and food packages we have – about the number of bullets we have left in the clip. Unfortunately, ammunition isn't something Edward's been blessed with in decent amounts, so you have to use it wisely – more often will we challenge the enemy in close quarters than shower him with lead. Heavy objects are what we’ll find particularly useful, including chairs, crates, TV sets, and even toilet bowls.... With their help, we can kill a monster with a single well-aimed throw – in contrast to strikes with our bare hands and bullets aimed anywhere but the monsters' head. There are only six types of monsters, but only two of them – very fast-moving, exploding scoundrels and fun-sized puncers – pose a threat mainly due of how fast they can approach the driver. The downside here is the fact that we are unable to jump – we could sure use this ability to escape from our opponents – although I am willing to accept this because of the convention of the game.

Apparently Martin is... indisposed today.

The game also features stubs of crafting and economy mechanics. Item crafting here is, unfortunately – for a survival game at least – very simplified and takes place aboard the train. When exploring subsequent stations we will come across a variety of cabinets, containing useful items such as pills (used to craft medicine kits) and gunpowder (for crafting ammunition). And that's pretty much it when it comes to craftsmanship – the rest of the items we find is garbage to be converted into virtual cash.

The whole system is rather flimsy – same as the economy in the cities. Other than the essential goods, we can purchase... a newspaper, which will no doubt further expand our knowledge of the world around us. That's not enough I'm afraid, as I hoped the game would provide much more options in this area. Especially given that such shortcomings have no plot justification whatsoever – and all it would take was for the shopkeeper to apologize to us for his limited range of goods because they've been cut off from supplies... Another huge disadvantage lies in the dialogues. Namely the absence of lines spoken by our hero, even though the game provides no information about him being mute. At one point, a soldier ordered me to stop and informed me that I was not permitted to enter hospital grounds. The next line (his and only his) consisted of three dots full of hateful confusion. Then he asked me for the access code, only to say – having first received no reply whatsoever from my character – "Okay, you can go in" the next second. This type of dumb situations is unfortunately quite common in The Final Station.

I understand the hero can be a man of few words, but this is taking it a bit far.

Midnight Train to Georgia

The Final Station appears to be a very good production, especially during the first hour of play – there are no roses without thorns however, and at some point they become painfully obvious. The sins of this game are associated mainly with dialogues and routine that rears its ugly head if we play for a bit longer – nonetheless, it's quite a good debut for Do My Best Games. With a clear conscience I stand by my opinion that this is the best (or at least one of the best) indie game released during this year's summer holidays. I've pulled an all-nighter because of this game and I regret nothing.