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 Aw yeah, great idea! Bacter, why are we on this train? This, friends, is the Let's Play The Final Station Train! We're here because I wish it, and because you've willingly entered THE BACTER ZONE! Alright, what's The Final Station? The final station is a dreamlike game about driving a train, the world falling apart, and you trying to do your job and save some of it. Dreamlike, huh? This another one of those games with a Mystery Plot? Oh the plot's straightforward enough. But the game is more about how you react to it, and how you feel. You'll see when we get there. Pretty cagey. Well, it's a game better experienced than dissected, at least beforehand. I'll have lots more to say as we go. Viewer interaction? Not for the first part. There will be when we hit the DLC. That's it for now, enjoy!  NO SPOILERS YOU FILTHY ANIMALS! IF WE HAVEN'T SEEN IT DON'T DISCUSS IT                  GirlCalledBob posted:Can we get a little info on what you have to do during the train journeys? Looks like you have to keep an eye on a couple of things, maybe, but it's kind of hard to follow when there's no explanation at all. I get that you want to keep the atmosphere going, but a short rundown of the mechanics would be neat. Right on. There are basically three things to do in the train:  Red = minigame Blue = passengers Yellow = terminal MINIGAMES Every time you take a train ride, there will be exactly one minigame active. You can tell which one, because sparks are coming out of it. They are all super simple (except one later that I had a hard time with. It's really simple, but I had no idea how to interact with it until I broke the train). Basically the goal of every minigame is to make the number go to 0. The number indicates how much additional power the train is using, and depending on what you're carrying and the stage, you will have some number usually ~7-8 extra units of power. If the number goes above that, the train stops and you have to fix it before you start moving again. It makes the train ride longer, which in turn demands more resources to keep your passengers alive. Bad news! The left-most mini game is just "make sure you pull this lever every so often". Other ones make you look for one mismatches between several displays, and press buttons to correct them. In the beginning, I REALLY thought they were going to start having multiple parts broken as you progressed, upping the frantic challenge, but no, it's only ever one broken per trip. I wonder if that was the original plan? Ah well. PASSENGERS Passengers talk to each other, and if you're close enough (and not distracted with mini-games) you can hear them talk. That's not necessary, but it's nice for world-building. Every passenger has hunger and health. Every passenger's hunger continually drains (except for a short break after they're fed). When hunger is at 0, their health starts to drain. When health is at 0, they instantly die and can't be revived. A passenger that's "wounded" will also get the "bleeding" effect. This means their health drains regardless of hunger. They'll need to be given food like regular AND medkits to temporarily stop the bleeding. Passengers need food to replenish hunger and medkits if they get unhealthy enough. Each are in VERY limited supply. You get a bonus for getting passengers through a level (their fare), and you drop all passengers at every level end. That means you can roll into the end of the level with very sick and hungry passengers and it's fine, but if you misjudge and enter into a train section with an almost-dead passenger from last time, they can die before you get them a medkit. TERMINAL The terminal has the map (you never need to check it, but there's nice lore about the stations), a texting function (as far as I can tell, you can't ever initiate a conversation with another driver, though sometimes they will text you), the crafting station, where you can make medkits and bullets, and a power gauge, where you can see how close to overloading the train is. That's totally useless - just check the minigame on your own to make sure it doesn't overheat. When you get to your destination, a lever pulls down and you yank on it to end that train section. Bacter fucked around with this message at 20:19 on Sep 17, 2017 |
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Jun 13, 2017 07:59
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Bacter, why are we on this train? This friends, is the Let's Play The Final Station Train! We're here because I wish it, and because you've willingly entered THE BACTER ZONE! Alright, what's The Final Station? The final station is a dreamlike game about driving a train, the world falling apart, and you trying to do your job and save some of it. Dreamlike, huh? This another one of those games with a Mystery Plot? Oh the plot's straightforward enough. But the game is more about how you react to it, and how you feel. You'll see when we get there. Pretty cagey. Well, it's a game better experienced than dissected, at least beforehand. I'll have lots more to say as we go. Viewer interaction? Not for the first part. There will be when we hit the DLC. That's it for now, enjoy! GirlCalledBob posted:Can we get a little info on what you have to do during the train journeys? Looks like you have to keep an eye on a couple of things, maybe, but it's kind of hard to follow when there's no explanation at all. I get that you want to keep the atmosphere going, but a short rundown of the mechanics would be neat. Right on. There are basically three things to do in the train:  Red = minigame Blue = passengers Yellow = terminal MINIGAMES Every time you take a train ride, there will be exactly one minigame active. You can tell which one, because sparks are coming out of it. They are all super simple (except one later that I had a hard time with. It's really simple, but I had no idea how to interact with it until I broke the train). Basically the goal of every minigame is to make the number go to 0. The number indicates how much additional power the train is using, and depending on what you're carrying and the stage, you will have some number usually ~7-8 extra units of power. If the number goes above that, the train stops and you have to fix it before you start moving again. It makes the train ride longer, which in turn demands more resources to keep your passengers alive. Bad news! The left-most mini game is just "make sure you pull this lever every so often". Other ones make you look for one mismatches between several displays, and press buttons to correct them. In the beginning, I REALLY thought they were going to start having multiple parts broken as you progressed, upping the frantic challenge, but no, it's only ever one broken per trip. I wonder if that was the original plan? Ah well. PASSENGERS Passengers talk to each other, and if you're close enough (and not distracted with mini-games) you can hear them talk. That's not necessary, but it's nice for world-building. Every passenger has hunger and health. Every passenger's hunger continually drains (except for a short break after they're fed). When hunger is at 0, their health starts to drain. When health is at 0, they instantly die and can't be revived. A passenger that's "wounded" will also get the "bleeding" effect. This means their health drains regardless of hunger. They'll need to be given food like regular AND medkits to temporarily stop the bleeding. Passengers need food to replenish hunger and medkits if they get unhealthy enough. Each are in VERY limited supply. You get a bonus for getting passengers through a level (their fare), and you drop all passengers at every level end. That means you can roll into the end of the level with very sick and hungry passengers and it's fine, but if you misjudge and enter into a train section with an almost-dead passenger from last time, they can die before you get them a medkit. TERMINAL The terminal has the map (you never need to check it, but there's nice lore about the stations), a texting function (as far as I can tell, you can't ever initiate a conversation with another driver, though sometimes they will text you), the crafting station, where you can make medkits and bullets, and a power gauge, where you can see how close to overloading the train is. That's totally useless - just check the minigame on your own to make sure it doesn't overheat. When you get to your destination, a lever pulls down and you yank on it to end that train section. Bacter fucked around with this message at 10:16 on Jun 16, 2017 |
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Jun 13, 2017 08:00
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I look forward to seeing your experiences. I bought this a while back and it's a difficult but well-done game.
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Jun 13, 2017 10:06
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I do not like this game at all. I seriously just did not manage to enjoy it
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Jun 13, 2017 11:12
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Yeah? Can you talk about why not without spoilers? It's fine if the answer is like "it's too depressing", or "it's too vague", just not stuff like "oh man when you fall down the pit of despair or whatever that's the worst".
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Jun 13, 2017 16:13
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Well, I always enjoyed trains and skull designs. So I guess I am in for the ride.
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Jun 13, 2017 16:49
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 Whoops!  I don't think the situation is bad enough that we need to eat someone's foot, yet.
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Jun 13, 2017 20:22
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As of tonight, I will have no idea what you're talking about, because the first video will always have been flawless.
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Jun 13, 2017 21:48
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This looks like my jam. Interesting atmosphere and a sense of creeping dread!
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Jun 13, 2017 22:30
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Bacter posted:Yeah? Can you talk about why not without spoilers? It's fine if the answer is like "it's too depressing", or "it's too vague", just not stuff like "oh man when you fall down the pit of despair or whatever that's the worst". I'll get into stuff I didn't like specifically when we reach it, but generally: too repetitive, too vague, the resource management/train repair starts to feel simultaneously underdone and overbearing, I felt the need to talk to everyone even though no one of them say anything interesting, the controls feel too floaty for how jumpy you need to be and the punch feels so lovely and underpowered I stopped using it even though it actually works fine Honestly a lot of my objections are more about how I played the game than the game itself, I think
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Jun 13, 2017 23:26
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I want to avoid spoilers myself, but I do have a few criticisms about the main game (and one ENORMOUS criticism about the DLC. It's a very very solid DLC with one unbelievably bone-headed design decision). Resource allocation and scarcity is a huge deal, but it's never really spelled out. You saw at the kiosk you could buy or sell food. Nothing is stopping you from going "man, I might need some money down the line! Better sell this food!", and also, nothing is stopping you from feeding everybody as soon as they drop below 1/2 hunger, or even just feeding one guy four times in a row if you want. Food is QUITE rare, and there is no means to make any. If you play your cards right, you will have a TINY bit more than exactly enough food to keep everybody going. Any mistakes and you're right at starvation level. Any MORE mistakes and it's rough times for your passengers. Medkits are less rare, and are craftable, BUT any you use on yourself counts against your total. It's MUCH better to just die and re-load a checkpoint (and you get all your health back when you finish a level) than it is to use your precious medkits. None of that is really communicated. All passengers exit at the end of the chapter, but food and medkits carry over, so if you blow your supply early on, you'll never REALLY recover. I actually think it works well narratively to have a big resource crunch scaring you, but it's sure not done fairly or, to be honest, in the most fun way possible. I'm a compulsive packrat and a begrudging user of any resources, and that's the attitude you NEED to make it through this game.
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Jun 14, 2017 00:14
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Can we get a little info on what you have to do during the train journeys? Looks like you have to keep an eye on a couple of things, maybe, but it's kind of hard to follow when there's no explanation at all. I get that you want to keep the atmosphere going, but a short rundown of the mechanics would be neat. Slightly awkward translation aside, this seems interesting.
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Jun 14, 2017 00:24
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Yeah, things seem pretty depressing and Russian right now. Those were some drat big guns going off. Artillery?
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Jun 14, 2017 02:11
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Glazius posted:Yeah, things seem pretty depressing and Russian right now. Something like that.
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Jun 14, 2017 08:15
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This looks like my kind of game. Vague, undefined post-apocalyptic story and all! The roughness of the translation is bugging me, though...
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Jun 14, 2017 08:35
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ALRIGHT, we got a few things to go over! 1) Update 2 I want one update per chapter. Unfortunately, that means the updates would be KINDA LONG, so I split this one up. Probably will happen in the future too I imagine? Anyway: 2) Bonus 1 I hadn't actually planned on this, but it was just so, so bizarre that I had to include it. I'd never seen what happened when one of my passengers died before, but I know now, and... You just straight up run up to the dead guy, yank his pants off, and kick the body out of the cabin. It's just... it's SO BIZARRE! 3) GirlCalledBob posted:Can we get a little info on what you have to do during the train journeys? Looks like you have to keep an eye on a couple of things, maybe, but it's kind of hard to follow when there's no explanation at all. I get that you want to keep the atmosphere going, but a short rundown of the mechanics would be neat. Right on. There are basically three things to do in the train: Red = minigame Blue = passengers Yellow = terminal MINIGAMES Every time you take a train ride, there will be exactly one minigame active. You can tell which one, because sparks are coming out of it. They are all super simple (except one later that I had a hard time with. It's really simple, but I had no idea how to interact with it until I broke the train). Basically the goal of every minigame is to make the number go to 0. The number indicates how much additional power the train is using, and depending on what you're carrying and the stage, you will have some number usually ~7-8 extra units of power. If the number goes above that, the train stops and you have to fix it before you start moving again. It makes the train ride longer, which in turn demands more resources to keep your passengers alive. Bad news! The left-most mini game is just "make sure you pull this lever every so often". Other ones make you look for one mismatches between several displays, and press buttons to correct them. In the beginning, I REALLY thought they were going to start having multiple parts broken as you progressed, upping the frantic challenge, but no, it's only ever one broken per trip. I wonder if that was the original plan? Ah well. PASSENGERS Passengers talk to each other, and if you're close enough (and not distracted with mini-games) you can hear them talk. That's not necessary, but it's nice for world-building. Every passenger has hunger and health. Every passenger's hunger continually drains (except for a short break after they're fed). When hunger is at 0, their health starts to drain. When health is at 0, they instantly die and can't be revived. A passenger that's "wounded" will also get the "bleeding" effect. This means their health drains regardless of hunger. They'll need to be given food like regular AND medkits to temporarily stop the bleeding. Passengers need food to replenish hunger and medkits if they get unhealthy enough. Each are in VERY limited supply. You get a bonus for getting passengers through a level (their fare), and you drop all passengers at every level end. That means you can roll into the end of the level with very sick and hungry passengers and it's fine, but if you misjudge and enter into a train section with an almost-dead passenger from last time, they can die before you get them a medkit. TERMINAL The terminal has the map (you never need to check it, but there's nice lore about the stations), a texting function (as far as I can tell, you can't ever initiate a conversation with another driver, though sometimes they will text you), the crafting station, where you can make medkits and bullets, and a power gauge, where you can see how close to overloading the train is. That's totally useless - just check the minigame on your own to make sure it doesn't overheat. When you get to your destination, a lever pulls down and you yank on it to end that train section. 4) Fixed the first video!
Bacter fucked around with this message at 16:59 on Jun 16, 2017 |
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Jun 16, 2017 10:13
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I just started the second video, and had an awful sense of deja vu. But it seems you've already noticed!
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Jun 16, 2017 10:55
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This feels like Papers, Please with a less imminent threat of death. It's interesting to watch, but I'm not sure I'd have the patience to play it.
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Jun 16, 2017 12:44
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Jabor posted:I just started the second video, and had an awful sense of deja vu. (edit: something, of course, went wrong) Bacter fucked around with this message at 16:10 on Jun 16, 2017 |
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Jun 16, 2017 16:02
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Rangpur posted:This feels like Papers, Please with a less imminent threat of death. It's interesting to watch, but I'm not sure I'd have the patience to play it. Trust me, you're going to feel the imminent threat of death hit you like a train later on. There are later station levels that rely on how you use your supplies, rather then having more of it (I'm assuming that's not spoilers, since that's kind of what natural progression of a game should do). I didn't realize how scarce bullets are at first and if you don't aim for the head for maximum damage, you can actually make the game unwinnable. I did so twice. The train parts are actually easier in comparison, but they really screw the narrative since its very hard to pay attention to the people talking when you're trying to keep them alive.
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Jun 16, 2017 16:13
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Jalak posted:Trust me, you're going to feel the imminent threat of death hit you like a train later on. Ba-dum, CSSSSHHHHHHH (part 2B is for REAL for real working!)
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Jun 16, 2017 17:01
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drat, 2B had a bunch of fights where I was genuinely surprised you made it out alive.
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Jun 16, 2017 18:07
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Electrum is a mix of gold and silver, but it has uses in electronics.
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Jun 17, 2017 00:44
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I watched a bit of some random YouTuber's play through the last time this game was on sale on Steam to see if it would be something I could get into, and the person playing also made a point to smash out every single window they came across... In the end I never picked up the game but I did end up watching more of it than I had planned. I'll stick around here to finally see how it ends.
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Jun 17, 2017 01:03
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We can buy some food with all of this money we've been getting, right? ...oh lord it's probably going to be prohibitively expensive, isn't it?
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Jun 17, 2017 02:59
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Depends on what you'd consider prohibitive! We need food desperately, and we've got an enormous pile of clothing and spoons to trade (as well as cash stolen from registers and closets), so we'll buy as much as we can. Which doesn't mean it's not going to be expensive as BUTTS. Shopkeepers are... more canny than humanitarian in a crisis. I'll say that. I mean, a $50 hamburger is just the BEGINNING.
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Jun 17, 2017 04:12
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I'm sure we will get all the burgs thanks to that guardian keychain!
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Jun 17, 2017 04:14
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Really enjoying this LP, the game looks really cool. The train sections look... aggravating, though. And that's just watching and being able to pause the video to read text. I mean, the backgrounds are gorgeous and haunting, but I can't imagine you get to look at them much when managing the breaking thing, watching food/health, reading texts/city description, and all the while trying to keep up with the conversation. I think the game might be better with a little more ability to enjoy the atmosphere in those sections. But that's just an opinion from a non-player.
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Jun 17, 2017 06:15
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Had only recently heard about this, and am enjoying the LP. Really curious about what is going on!
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Jun 18, 2017 22:12
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I assume the gas shells kill people so they can't be infected by shadowitis.
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Jun 20, 2017 09:56
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An interesting theory, and one certainly not out of character from what we've seen so far! I really enjoy how the tension is handled in this game. This next part is crucial to if you agree with me or not: see what you think, I'd love to hear impressions! Incidentally, as concerns the panic and frustration of the train rides: I'm fully willing to admit this may be me making excuses for a game I like, but I actually think it all fits with the theme of the game. This is a huge catastrophe out of nowhere. There's barely time to think, we're racing against time, and managing everything SHOULD feel hectic. I'm getting more of the conversations than ever before, reading them while making these videos. I get the bare-bones glimpses of them while rushing around the train - just as the conductor would!
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Jun 20, 2017 18:27
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That tunnel is incredibly creepy, and inexplicably full of food. Are we to take it the shadows don't eat? Even the dead bodies don't look eaten, just mutilated. The train backgrounds certainly are beautiful, and I like how they even build up the otherworldliness of the environment. The mountains and forests look like they're higher resolution than anything else in the game, so when you see a blocky piece of wreckage sticking out it's extremely obvious.
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Jun 20, 2017 21:39
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So the conspiracy hides in a bar in the middle of an undeground complex while we nuking cities? I can't decide, if the game leans on dark comedy or horrors of human society. Considering the inspirational material could be from a Strugatsky brothers, maybe both. The whole worldbuilding is quite interesting, but could not enjoy the hectic gameplay (especially the train minigames). Thanks for playing it for us, bacter.
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Jun 20, 2017 22:32
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I'm so confused. I can't tell the brilliant brain-bending cryptic ambiguities apart from the weirdly-translated bits, although in the right circumstances even those help the mood. Plus, I'm surprised he can hear anything after firing off so many bullets in enclosed tunnels for several days. Hey, maybe the train conductor only thinks he gets his health fully restored at the end of each stop, and he's actually slowly bleeding out from a couple of nasty bites while concussed from a half-dozen nearby explosions (some self-inflicted) and shadow-beatings. It would explain a few things.
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Jun 20, 2017 22:52
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Incidentally, this is the image I don't much care for. Square jaw, muscly arms, stoic expression. We're not Channing Tatum, we're some dork with a gun and a strong sense of responsibility!
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Jun 20, 2017 23:57
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So, the government dudes are responsible for the gas shells, which are the things that start the infection? And they hang out with guys that are part of (what looks like) a cult that worships the darkness? Really, really weird. Looking forward to seeing where it is all going!
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Jun 21, 2017 00:27
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Bacter posted:Incidentally, this The thing that most feels like a mismatch for me is the apparent age. Look at that guy. Mid twenties at the tail end. He's a new conductor, and he's getting a helluva first day on the job. Hell, maybe he just picked up the uniform off a corpse, figured that confidence would be good enough in the apocalypse, because yeah. He's good enough. Meanwhile, our guy? He's older. Middle aged, got a bit of a beer belly, been running trains most of his life and you know what? That's fine. It's not a bad life, pays enough to help the family. Only now the world's gone to poo poo and he's suddenly responsible for the best chance its got, stumbling along because it's not like anyone has a better plan. It's odd.
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Jun 21, 2017 00:39
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Bacter posted:Incidentally, this Yeah, this game came up in my steam queue with that image and I wrote it off as blah zombie survival game #5999. Happy to have been wrong!
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Jun 21, 2017 00:56
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Is there anywhere that you can find transcripts of the full dialogue of the passengers?
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Jun 21, 2017 01:24
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I don't know of one! It's not on the wiki, and I don't immediately see where it would be stored in the game files. I'll do some more digging, especially becauseQuestion On The FAQ posted:I was wondering if it's possible to get different conversations by having different combinations of survivors (i.e. letting survivors die, or purposefully avoiding to pick up others so you get one or a pair of others alone and they'd interact with just each other without interjecting from the others). Also, if the conversations from these combinations provides different information, or if it's just a lesser subset of the major ones if you successfully maintain the maximum living survivors. Dev Response posted:Hey, the answer is yes, but less persons in the train less value it will have, most of the time. Awesome. Most of the time. Edit: I just want to register this. I've been using all Train terms for update names, and while I think some of them fit nicely (smokebox I'm especially fond of), update 3B really needs to be called "Tunnel Vision". It's a delightful pun, and I'm angry that my own neuroses won't let me use it. Bacter fucked around with this message at 02:22 on Jun 21, 2017 |
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Jun 21, 2017 02:10
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