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Trainfort, developed by UDevLemon, has a lot to offer, making it somewhat difficult to describe to those who haven’t played it yet. Thanks to publisher tinyBuid, I was given a chance to putter through the playtest as a dwarf, hoping to survive and rebuild in a challenging yet beautiful world. Fortunately, you won’t be expected to always go it alone, and are able to play with an additional three friends in online co-op
Although many games exist in the survival and resource-gathering genre, Trainfort still stands out due to its unique crafting system, even if the controls require some adjustment. I walked away feeling that Trainfort will help in creating a new standard for worlds like these and immersion beyond having to watch your food and water intake.
Shove This in My Big Ol’ Bag of Holding
Part of what helps Trainfort stand against other similar games is its unique approach to crafting and, more specifically, what you are allowed to grab and use to craft with. When you want to take something and add it to your inventory, you need to open your bag, place it somewhere where it will fit, and then physically pick up the item and drop it in. This same bag is also where you can craft items such as weapons, clothing, and even structures using a rather primitive crafting system.
So, before long, you quite literally will have a bag filled with items that you need to lug around, lest you get rid of a few things now and then, I think this approach is great for helping you literally visualize what you’re grabbing and putting away, as I think players tend to take that feature for granted until it’s time to empty their pockets because they’ve reached their weight limit. However, this also introduces an interesting issue of optimization. Why? Trainfort makes you feel as though you’re supposed to be playing with a VR headset.
Every action requires you to accurately aim the cursor and press, push, or grab objects as you would in a virtual reality game. I found myself frustrated at times with how often I had to scoot closer to grasp something or how many times I accidentally flung an object away because I didn’t realize it was a solid item. I will admit that after slowly getting used to the gameplay, I found its strangeness to be a non-issue and realized it was much more a matter of personal preference. The sense of achievement I would feel after crafting something I could use to help propel myself a little bit further into the clutches of this unforgiving overworld was incomparable to other similar games.
Ready to Argue With Your Friends?
Are you a fan of survival games with co-op elements like Enshrouded or Valheim? While the playtest for Trainfort didn’t offer co-op capabilities, I can already see its potential from the moment you make your way into the game’s overworld for the first time. Considering how much you can build up toward using just your weirdly large inventory bag, I can only imagine what can be done with several people working at once.
The gameplay allows you to use both your hands to pick up objects and craft with them. I can also envision hilarious scenarios where players lob things at one another or take advantage of the ragdoll physics. Yeah, the game is still in its playtest phase, but there is so much potential that can be seen in this small glimpse, which, in reality, is rather large and incredibly ambitious. So, I can only imagine what sort of physics and gameplay features we will come to see in viral videos and clips after the game has officially been released.
Trainfort will be available for PC via Steam. There is also a Trainfort playtest that players can currently request access to.
