Train Journey
You wake up on an empty train. None of its stops are your own. How will you get home...?
Description:
Train Journey is a 16-cartridge PICO-8 game (the maximum size) about a mysterious train to which the player is seemingly bound. Travel between stops, meet unique characters, and learn their stories. Can you free yourself and return home? Or will you ride the train forever...?
Controls:
[X/V]: Use Shooty (an unlockable item)
Enter: Pause
Left & Right Arrow Keys: Movement
Up Arrow Key: Interact & Shooty Up
Down Arrow Key+[X/V]: Use Shovel
The game is also compatible with most controllers.
Notes:
Due to the way I used PICO-8 to make this game, and as a result of the level layout, you are unable to save in any "train stop" level. The game can only be saved in the train (when the screen flashes "game saved"). Note that the candle checkpoints are only checkpoints! You will not start at the checkpoint if you restart the game, so I'd recommend playing one level at a time, when you have the time to beat a whole level in a single sitting.
Note that there may be some bugs still left in, so please let me know if you spot any! (I really need some variation in my cockroach stew I'm making)
I'll be releasing the whole soundtrack on my YouTube Channel, so go check it out if you want!
Even if you're not interested in playing, thank you so much for checking out this game!
And if you are interested in the game, you can check out its itch.io page!
(Ok, also a disclaimer, I spent a couple hours modifying these 16 cartridges and making it so that it works when uploaded to the BBS, so I may have made a mistake while doing that. Please let me know if you encounter any issues with loading into new areas. And due to how tedious it is to make it work in the BBS, this version of the game probably won't receive as frequent of bugfixes as the version on itch.io)
What an ambitious project. This is really impressive. The stories are interesting and I love the variety of music.
I do seem to have run into a game-breaking bug, though. I had made it to the airship, then stopped playing. Now, when I load the game, the next stop is always the tree village, which I've already completed (at least I think; I beat the boss on my initial visit, then came back and got the watch parts after completing the cave). If I go all the way to the end of the level, there's no boss, but when I exit that screen, I hear the train (which seems to signify some sort of progress). When I go back to the train, there's really nothing to do, because I've explored it to the extent my abilities allow. If I go up to the front of the train, get the ticket, then go back to the main car, when the train slows down, the next stop is again the tree village. Maybe I'm misunderstanding how the stops work, but it seems to be stuck in a loop. I'm not sure what happened.
Anyway, I've enjoyed what I've played so far. Though I haven't completed the level, the story for the airship is cool. I really like the gameplay in the cave level (though it took me an embarrassingly long time to puzzle through the passages), and the boss there is great.
As for critique, I do think the readability of the tiles could be improved. As is, it's sometimes difficult to tell what is background or solid or jump-through.
Thanks so much, @binaryeye !! I really appreciate the feedback! That is a very odd bug and I haven't encountered that yet... I'll try and see if I can figure out what happened. Maybe the save data code has an issue? Anyway sorry about that ahaha!
Ah! I think I figured it out, it'll be quick to fix I think. It's a really silly problem where you're only supposed to be able to collect the ticket once, I guess I didn't check and make sure that was really true. I can't believe I didn't catch this earlier! @binaryeye If you can remember and tell me what watch pieces you collected, I can upload a cart that fixes the save data for you.
Thanks for offering to upload a fixed cart. I just went ahead and restarted.
Finally finished the game, though I didn't find all of the watch pieces. I didn't find one in the airship, so I assume I missed one there, but I don't know where the other might have been. I did see a city level in one of your trailers, and I never got there, so maybe I missed something. Anyway, very fun game! The overall narrative is really good and I like the boss battles a lot.
I did find another bug, though it's minor: Sometimes when re-entering a boss room (after dying to the boss), if the player immediately moves forward, the game behaves as if there's a solid in the way, and the player can't move forward until they move backward or jump before moving forward.
the game is amazing, but it is really hard, (also, WHY is there that checkpoint by the airship watch piece, it's torture to get back from)
also, it can be hard to tell what is going on, and that has made me die several times
@Sup3rAw3som3Gam3r thanks! And thanks for the feedback!
That checkpoint is mainly there because things like core items (like an ability or watch pieces) aren't kept if you get them then die before saving at a checkpoint. Now, I do realize that doesn't really make sense as I write this, and all items should be kept even after dying before a checkpoint. I think I'll change that, but it'll be awhile before I upload the change if I do change that.
(Are you currently stuck at the airship watch portion?)
Btw sorry if any of this makes no sense, I've been making food all day and I'm pretty exhausted lol.
I did manage to beat the airship, and get the watch bit, but ended up giving up in the desert when I couldn't figure out where to go
some of the level stuff in general is just really hard, and not fun to do
the bosses are pretty fun, though
WHERE IS THE SHOVEL???
also, damage boosting shouldn't be required in the game
To be fair damage boosting with the rocket is required for the watch piece in the airship level. I kinda justified it with the fact that the watch pieces are not required in the game, only to unlock something later on (not literally) but I don't really think I like the damage boosting requirement there either. I'll try to upload a ver 1.2 soon after the new year
@binaryeye thank you for the help with the shovel, I though one of the pieces was behind a dig spot, but I was wrong
also, can the dragon's super attack be nerfed a bit?
edit: the late game damage is just too much, in my opinon
Hmm the one where it
shoots the giant projectiles?
Yeah half total health is a bit much I guess and they can be tough to dodge... I kinda like the "avoid at all costs" high stakes that brings to the battle though. Would making them move more slowly and increasing the amount of time between shots (to make them easier to dodge) seem acceptable? I might also decrease the damage to a little bit less than half, that way it's still a lot of damage, but the player can also take more hits in the battle.
fair, but it is almost impossible to dodge, due to the wind strength
the moon is also just not fun, due to the high damage taken
Ok just uploaded a 1.2 version (yea it's early). Aside from some small tweaks to attempt to improve readability and removing a damage-boost requirement for an optional item, I fixed a bug that was causing the game to not reset properly when starting a new game. I also made some small changes to improve difficulty a bit.
oh and also I changed the main cart's name from trainjourney_main to trainjourney
Yay! @Bloodbane I just replied to the post you made. Thanks for all the feedback!
Release 1.3:
Mainly:
I fixed a bug in level 4 that told the player to do something they've already done
I also made the first boss overall much better than before. It now is not as unpredictable, and less boring/tedious.
Also:
I retextured a couple things in the main (train) cart to hopefully improve readability and let the player better understand where to go.
I adjusted the difficulty in a secret level so that the player can replenish health more easily
Oh no! Thanks so much for reporting that bug, @Ben731985 ! I hope that it crashing wasn't too troublesome for you... Though there are two places I can think of that you could be describing. Is this in the 5th stop? (The one after the desert).
legitimately the most fun game ive played on pico 8!! well done, i was kind of hoping you could fix the system when you reopen the cart? Its annoying to redo a whole world whenever you leave the tab, would be better if i could pick up were i left off you know. Thanks very much!
Hey, @mrsandman ! I'm glad you liked it!! As for the saving system, I'm afraid it's unlikely that'll change, for several reasons. Though, I'd recommend for any future playthroughs- if you intend to do any- playing it on the pico-8 app or downloading it from the itch.io page (it's free!) if you're having troubles with your browser closing the game.
Thanks for the comment, and I hope ya have a nice day! :D
For those interested, the soundtrack is now available for free on Bandcamp :D
https://meivuu.bandcamp.com/album/train-journey-official-soundtrack
Release 1.4
Ok I finally found the time to upload these changes, and I hope to move on to other projects soon!
I tweaked the music in the 4th and 5th bosses, and updated the bandcamp album accordingly
I made a tile change in the second level that hopefully makes readability better, and removed something I added on a whim a while back.
Let me know if you encounter any issues with this version and I'll fix em as soon as I can
Thanks if you played and I hope you have a good one!
Release 1.5
I posted this game on Newgrounds and it got a lot of attention!
... that also means that a lot of people encountered bugs and had other issues, so this patch is for that reason!
-
birds in level 1 no now shoot projectiles for a shorter duration
-
rockets in level 5 no longer crash the game if you shoot them (no idea how I missed that one before!)
-
boss 4's big projectile attack has been made less difficult (again, haha)
-
the rocket is now always active when the player is pogoing
-
fixed level 4's pages remaining becoming a negative number (again. I swear I fixed this before but I guess not)
-
when shoveling, the player now shovels to the side first, and then down
-
added a bit of in-game text to clarify that the player can shoot up (yes, there's a story behind that lol)
-
I made the pitfalls in the interior of the train more obviously dangerous, since it sends the player back pretty far
- revisited the 5th boss to improve some plot consistency
I had to update every cart to upload this patch to the BBS, which is a very tedious process, so let me know if anything seems to go wrong when going between carts or entering an area.
Also......
A spanish translation is coming!!
Huge thanks to Pablo Blanco de la Haza for helping me by translating all the text! It'll be a while longer, but I thought this would be a good time to mention it.
This is an amazing game, and I love the soundtrack. I do have one problem though—is it not possible to reset the game to the very beginning so I can play it again to try to collect all watch pieces this time? When I try resetting cart, it just sends me back to the train checkpoint.
Hi @hahhah42 ! To reset the game, you can select "begin" instead of "continue" in the main menu of the game. (you can get to the main menu by reloading the page)
I'm glad you like my game and I hope you'll appreciate the reward for collecting all the watch pieces!
(✿◠‿◠)
It's possible I misunderstood something, but this looks like a soft lock and I'm not sure what I was supposed to do differently to prevent it..
Hey @kimiyoribaka , I wasn't aware this was possible, but thanks for showing me!! For that puzzle you've gotta drop the pots down one by one so that they form a stack and then you push the top one to the right. It does look like the pots are stuck there but you should be able to load a different area or walk into a building or fall into spikes and die to reset the position of the pots.
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