Sometimes there are obvious indications of things being short fads, but we surely cannot say that for the games that prioritize crafting and survival elements. The gaming market has never been short of those titles, and adding a new one to the basket usually doesn’t change the flow. There are, of course, some staple titles in this genre, such as Mojang’s Minecraft or Unknown Worlds Entertainment’s Subnautica. Both of these games heavily rely on finding sources to keep yourself alive and avoiding threats you come across during your adventure.  A quick gaze at Voidtrain gave me the same vibes as those titles as they employed the same game mechanics. Though after playing for a while, I realized Voidtrain’s own take on craft survival is actually quite new and honest compared to the previous titles.

Because of the bloat that we call “craft and survival games” on the market, my initial take was, “Ah, not again… How many times do they have to make another early access survival game that relies on crafting?” when I saw Voidtrain, but it actually surprised me for things I didn’t account for. Of course, I would like to talk about them and explain in detail, but it is just better to talk about the backstory of Voidtrain first in order to answer questions like “Why are you riding a train car in the middle of nowhere?” or “Why are you floating like a balloon?”

In the snow-covered mountains of an unknown place, there lies an outpost. This outpost is usually home to engineers who are doing research in that area, and people who take care of the outpost tend to get changed in intervals, from month to month. One day, the newcomer of the outpost sadly got lost in the dense forest during a snowstorm, and their map flew away to darkness. Without any guidance, they tried to find their outpost, but they found an abandoned cottage. Since they had no option, the cottage was the only place to keep themselves away from the storm.

That’s exactly where it gets interesting as you, the engineer, finds an odd structure like a Stargate portal. Being an engineer, of course, you are intrigued by it and find a way to power it up. As soon as that happens, they are sucked into the portal with the train car on the tracks. There is no turning back now, only going forward (which is something you can only do anyways). As you keep riding the train tracks, there are items that you can pick up along the way, there is one problem though, they are floating in the air, and- wait, if they can float in the void, so can you. That’s right, now the title makes sense, you are riding a train in a void while collecting items to keep your engineering spirit intact.

I must say the narration of the whole story is quite immersive, the narrator (who is an omniscient person that you never see) always guides you on what to expect and what should be your next move. With the majority of craft and survival games lacking empathy for the player, Voidtrain actually employed a narrator who speaks to the player, makes jokes and even breaks the fourth wall at some times in order to show how witty he is. It is exactly the same as the Narrator from the Stanley Parable series if you have ever played those, and honestly it is a very nice addition to the atmosphere of the Voidtrain.

After passing through the first gate, Voidtrain actually plays like a basic survival game with craft elements. First, you gather some sources like wood, scrap metal, ice and… Chemicals? Anyways, once you gather enough items, you can start using your journal to keep track of what to do next. Journal is basically your in-game guide to sources, crafting, natural enemies and objectives to be informed about. There is also your crafting book which you can get to create items such as iron, copper, bandages, food and even guns. Oh, talking about guns, Voidtrain also has gunplay, which is a nice bonus. You won’t encounter your trusty weapon until the first outpost you come along on the tracks, but once you equip it, it is yours forever. It has unlimited ammunition as well, so you can heavily rely on it when the time comes.

I briefly mentioned outposts in the last paragraph, and those places have a big role in both your and the story’s progression. Each time you visit one, through those portal doors, you can relax and search for more sources scattered around the buildings. Sometimes there are bandits who defend these outposts, but they shouldn’t give you a tough time as you have a revolver to defend yourself. If you happen to progress without any hiccups, the outposts you come across will be actually helpful instead of repeating themselves. Once you do, the outposts will progress the story and become tougher to get through. Meanwhile, the first few stops were filled with basic gunmen, the later few had machine gunners in sturdier armor.

In the outposts, you will also be able to upgrade your train car to your desire, well, if you happen to have the right sources. Sometimes the game asks for twice the amount of items to upgrade your wagon, so it is best to ride along the tracks until hitting another outpost for upgrades. To be fair, the selections you have as upgrades are nifty, you can elongate your car, add more tiles and even add more cars to give space to your gadgets.

While you are playing Voidtrain, you’ll be glad that your character is an engineer, as there are a ton of resources to create equipment with. There is the steamer, which takes the heavy load of creating base ingots like iron and copper bars. Then the workbench turns them into tools, the lab creates chemical based tools such as grease, an armory to modify and create new weapons, a crusher to turn raw material into usable ones and many more. It doesn’t end there, the research center also helps to create armor, backpack, bandages and other items that will help you in combat and surviving too. Overall, learning techniques in Voidtrain are linear, but effective for the player in the long run. The only nitpick I had was that some items are hard to come by, such as leather, which caused me to have a headache. As it turns out, I had to actively hunt the void’s own flying creature and kill them. It doesn’t have a guarantee on dropping leather, so it is a bit misleading.

I would like to mention the co-op mode real quick. Since Voidtrain is a craft survival game, of course, it has to feature a co-op mode. After all, these sorts of titles are worth your time more while playing with friends. Developer Hypetrain Digital is working heavily on the operational co-op mode right now, and it might be a little buggy to test out. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to play co-op, as you might guess, but it shouldn’t be hard to imagine what it would be like to play Voidtrain with your partner.

Now you might think Voidtrain is a bit grindy or same-y, just like any other craft and survival game on the market, but as you keep playing through, the game just throws another mechanic at you to get used to and actually makes you keep an eye out of sources, meanwhile trying to learn how to save resources properly. For example, you don’t only get the revolver, you actually can build your own guns, or you can modify your wagon to look like an actual steam engine with proper train cars with a solid roof. You can have servants working for you at later levels and even clash with other AI-controlled trains in the void. Voidtrain just doesn’t stop at peak, it keeps going and further enhances the experience by adding challenges to what you have on top. It’s easy to understand that the gameplay is something quite enjoyable as I got hooked up to it as I kept playing and rode my train deep down to the void even further.

Quickly talking about graphics and overall gameplay, Voidtrain actually delivers an astonishing display of the current generation of well-designed graphics. Well, it is due to being powered by Unreal Engine, no surprises there. The color scheme is a bit of a mish-mash of an industrial color palette with hollow colors and sweet ones like the sunset of the void. It must be said, however, there was another little something that caught my eye while playing Voidtrain and that was the superb movement. As you remember, all of our actions are taken in the void, and only the train car and outposts have their own gravitational field. Rest of the world doesn’t have any, so you are floating whenever you need to grab a resource from the void or scare off a creature who’s bothering you. Unlike what I thought, which was controls and sense of movement being handled awfully, it was the opposite and worked like a treat.

After all, that saying, sure, Voidtrain can reach its own goals by executing the idea properly, but it still lacks in some regard to make me feel a bit uncomfortable. Unlike other games, you have only one place to work with, and that’s your own train car, you are always attached to it and have to move with it. You don’t have much freedom in your hands, outposts might be the only time you get to separate yourself from the train car, but even then, those stops last 10 minutes at best due to lacking space at the outposts.

Since you are almost always in the same place of work, things get very stale very quickly. Sadly, it takes a bit of time to have some action going on if you happen to fail to progress the basic objectives. Too bad the game decides to keep you in the same level of progression. Unless you finish the next objective, which I feel like shouldn’t be the case with a survival game based on crafting. Players need to explore and understand the core mechanics through detailed instructions and not get stuck between one line of confusing objectives. Not saying you should be thrown into the direst possible situations right away, but taking a bit of freedom away in a game that has a void to freely float is somewhat ironic.

Overall, Voidtrain was another survival game with crafting and resource elements, however, their take on the genre is different compared to what we used to know, which is actually worth taking a look at. In fact, despite not being so kind to these titles at all, I wonder what Voidtrain has prepared for me in the upcoming gates and keep playing to unveil the story of a lost engineer.

A little heads-up, just like any other new release on the market, Voidtrain’s developers are aware of the fact that it is an early-access title with potential bugs and glitches. Their main goal is to keep coop, So they have set up a Discord channel for bug reports, discussions, or further suggestions. My overall suggestion is to check out Voidtrain if you are itching for a new and exciting craft and survival game, it will be totally worth your time.

AtillaTuran
Editor, NoobFeed