Developer: Nearga
Publisher: Hypetrain Digital
Platform: PC
Tested on: PC
Voidtrain – Preview
If you’re an avid visitor of our site, you may have noticed that we like games that feature trains. The latest title to be a part of this hyperfixation is Voidtrain, a game that has been in Early Access for quite some time now, debuting on Epic Games back in 2021, with a Steam release back in May of this year. With the full release supposedly coming sometime next year, we’re taking a look at what Voidtrain already has to offer. Is it worth hopping on early or are you better off waiting for this train to arrive at its final station?
Before we dive into the nitty and gritty details of it all, we should explain Voidtrain’s outlandish concept, as it might not entirely be what you’d expect from a train game. Voidtrain is a first-person survival game built around crafting mechanics. Players step into the boots of the titular train’s engineer as they navigate the alien-infested infinite void of outer space. Yes, you read that right: this is a game about trains in outer space. Oh, and it’s set during the second World War. Along the way, the engineer(s) can tether themselves to the front of the train to collect resources. These can be used to upgrade the train, eventually turning it into a powerful engine of war. The purpose for this isn’t entirely clear, at least not in the Early Access build. There are story snippets here and there about a scientist that is being searched for by the Nazis. In its current state, however, Void Train lacks a clear and cohesive story. For now, the game puts focus on surviving in the harsh, cold void, without really having to concern yourself with the overarching plot.
As to why you’d want to transform the train into a killing machine, we’ll remind you that there is a war going on. At fairly regular intervals, the train will encounter enemy strongholds, staffed by soldiers that you’ll need to take out using the weapons you load out your train with. These come in two varieties: outposts that block the road and simply require you to kill everything, and depots, which come with the added benefit that you can use these as a workshop to upgrade your train even further. That is, provided you have the necessary resources, of course. This is easier said than done, as the resources you collect are seemingly randomized, and we didn’t find an efficient way to farm specific materials.
Your main tool for converting your train from a literal hand-cranked platform on wheels into the Allied equivalent of Snowpiercer is your trusty notebook, which contains step-by-step instructions for all the available upgrades. Early on, you’ll just need to gather basic resources, but of course, the mid-to-late stage improvements require more advanced materials, many of which require multiple stages of crafting. It’s a time-intensive process, and you’ll need to keep an eye on your health (or Satiety, as it’s called here) and eat and drink to keep yourself sustained. You’ll also need to maintain your train’s armor level, as this drops significantly when the train takes damage.
As you can imagine, with the game focusing on a train, there isn’t a whole lot of room for exploration, as you are limited by railroad tracks, even though the game is presented from a first-person perspective. You’ll eventually unlock the ability to disembark from the train itself, so that you can venture into your surroundings to gather more resources, but even then, the distance that you can wander from the train feels very limited. This is by design of course, but the game feels like an on-rails experience, and it would have benefited from having more branching pathways. As it stands, this is probably Voidtrain’s biggest issue: while the core experience definitely shows potential, the game feels very lacking in terms of content and ways to motivate the player to return to it. There is no sense of discovery and with no story to speak of, there is nothing to incentivize you to return to it after you’ve played for half an hour or so. Sure, you can try to obtain every possible upgrade and weapon, but with no real meaningful reason to do so, why would you?
This barebones feeling translates to other aspects of the game as well. For a game that centers around creating your own train-based war machine, there is very little customization present, with a very limited character creation tool. While we definitely appreciate the game’s steampunk aesthetic, we do feel that there is a lot of untapped potential here for cosmetics, so that your train feels unique. Given that Voidtrain supports co-op for up to four players, having a custom train could really tap into that feeling of assembling a ragtag crew. We should probably mention that we only tried Voidtrain’s solo gameplay, but we definitely see the potential of teaming up with friends to mow down Nazis from the back of a railroad behemoth.
There certainly are areas where Voidtrain could use more polish ahead of its full release. Enemy AI isn’t up to snuff, and the game instead relies on outgunning you rather than challenging you in clever ways. Early on, enemies will overwhelm you through sheer firepower, but at a certain point, the tables turn and the game becomes surprisingly easy as a result. We also ran into several glitches during our time with Voidtrain, where items spawned in unreachable areas or where we got stuck in the environment, but we assume these will be dealt with before the game leaves Early Access. Fortunately, the game does have an active Discord server, where bugs can be reported, and the developer is actively working on making the game as good as possible.
Conclusion
With the foundation firmly in place, Voidtrain shows glimmers of potential, but the game still needs quite a bit of bells and whistles before this train ride is worth embarking on. Apart from the necessary bug fixes, Voidtrain needs to flesh out its story to keep players engaged for longer than a handful of hours. We would also absolutely welcome more freedom when it comes to exploration and customization, although in the grand scheme of things, these are probably less important than the overarching narrative. While we do feel that Voidtrain doesn’t have quite enough content to offer just yet, we’ll be keeping an eye on it for the full release next year.
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