‘RailGods of Hysterra’ Shows Promise, But Certain Mechanics Bog Down the Experience [Early Access Review]

A few years ago, we reviewed the high-concept indie Choo Choo Charles, in which the player was relentlessly stalked by an unholy hybrid of spindly spider demon and traditional steam locomotive. Picture Thomas the Tank Engine by way of Amnesia and you’re in the right ballpark.

It was a knowingly quirky elevator pitch and one that you’d think would remain quite singular in the grand scheme of things. At the very least, it’s a statistical improbability that the same idea would crop up again in the career of the same games journalist. And yet, with RailGods of Hysterra today entering Early Access, we find ourselves experiencing a profound sense of déjà vu.

After all, we are now in the extraordinary position of being able to claim that: “if we had a penny for every time we covered a low budget, cosmic horror title, set in an open world populated by religious nutjobs and with a grotesque, sentient train monster at its core, then we’d have two pennies.” Which isn’t a lot, but it’s weird that it happened twice!

In RailGods’ defence, however, that surface-level appraisal is where any meaningful similarities between it and Choo Choo Charles end. The latter was a decidedly tongue-in-cheek affair — playing its outrageous premise for laughs — whereas Troglobytes Games’ new outing is comparatively straight-faced. The two also inhabit completely different genres, with CCC taking after stealth experiences like Outlast and Alien: Isolation, while RailGods positions itself more as an isometric, co-op RPG with base-building elements.

Yet the biggest point of divergence is surely in how these two-of-a-kind releases opt to characterise their eldritch train creatures. You see, the titular Charles of Choo Choo Charles was an unrepentant asshole through and through — hounding you across the map, disrupting your best-laid plans, trying to impale you with its arachnoid legs, and generally making a nuisance of itself.

The “Rail God” that ferries you around Hysterra, on the other hand, is a pretty cool guy (at least once you look past its off-putting physiognomy and insatiable appetite for human flesh). Not only does it serve as a useful mode of cross-country transportation and a reliable sanctuary for the player, but it’s also an inter-level hub that you’ll come to rely on. When hitching a ride aboard one of the living train’s carriages you’ll have the opportunity to do a little inventory management, craft superior equipment for your upcoming excursions, research schematics for further upgrades, invest points in the game’s skill tree, and even unwind by indulging in a spot of interior design. Oh, and it’ll furnish you with some dark magicks to help you repel the hostile forces that dwell in the surrounding wastelands.

Going Off the Rails on a Crazy Train

Speaking of which, RailGod’s diegesis is an intriguing one. Where a lot of contemporary horror games are clearly indebted to the works of H.P. Lovecraft, few of them take the extra step of making him an actual in-universe character. But Troglobytes has done just that with their title, imagining a world in which the trailblazing author was more than just a mere peddler of pulp, and was in fact a bona fide augur whose outlandish writings belonged decidedly on the non-fiction shelf.

Convinced that the “Great Old Ones” of his Cthulhu mythos would one day arrive to wreak havoc on Earth, this version of Lovecraft spent decades steeling himself for the worst (hey, doomsday preparing has gotta be a way healthier outlet than all that racist letter correspondence he was busy with in real life). One especially wise precaution he took was to recruit a squadron of brave explorers to venture into the so-called “dreamlands” on his behalf, and see what could be learned from there about this coming evil.

Taking control of one of these metaphysical interlopers — whose appearance can be tailored via a pretty decent character creator — you awaken to a world that has gone utterly to shit. Apparently, you managed to sleep through the prophesied celestial invasion and are now one of only a handful of people left alive on the planet still in possession of their mental faculties. Everyone else has either kicked the bucket, mutated into some unspeakable abomination, or otherwise just surrendered themselves to lunacy.

As you’d expect, it’s now your job to deal with these sorry remnants of mankind, as you embark on an epic quest across the newly-christened land of Hysterra. Don’t worry though, you’ll never be alone in this endeavour. On the contrary, other dreamers can join your party at any juncture and, even if you don’t have the luxury of friends, you can still depend on your trusty Rail God for company.

Created by the “Priests of Leng” and birthed of “shoggoth-plasm” (if you read At the Mountains of Madness you might have a 30% chance of understanding what some of that means), the latter is basically a macabre union of flesh, iron and razor-sharp teeth that’s been fused together into the shape of a tentacled locomotive. One that is bound to forever serve you, so long as you continue to stoke its furnace fires. Not by feeding it coal as you might expect, but rather by performing arcane blood sacrifices.

A One-Way Track to Madness 

Suffice it to say, there’s a lot to get to grips with here, especially when it comes to the intricate survival mechanics (more on them later). Nevertheless, if you decide to stick with RailGods past its front-loaded tutorials and overwhelming lore dumps, then you’ll be rewarded with an enthralling adventure that keeps you coming back for more.

The premise is undeniably intriguing and establishes a world that’s filled with striking enemy types and atmospheric locales. One minute you’ll be skulking around a Bloodborne-esque fishing hamlet — trying to evade the barnacled beasties that call it home — the next you’ll be going toe-to-toe with demented lighthouse wickies or pillaging the wreckage of another, ill-fated voyager’s train.

Regardless of what objective you’re pursuing, you can always rely on the punchy isometric combat to hold your attention. While the moveset isn’t super expansive, tactics do still come into play as you’ll need to: consider where to strategically position yourself; carefully observe attack patterns; and make judicious use of cool-down abilities to gain the advantage. Sure, it’s hardly Sekiro, but there’s a pleasing amount of depth to what could, in lesser hands, have been a rudimentary exercise in button mashing.

If we did have a quibble with the combat, it’d be the fact that hotkey shortcuts appear to erase themselves after death and aren’t reinstated upon you salvaging leftover gear. Which just means that you’ve got to periodically go through the annoying hassle of rebinding each and every weapon or consumable in your loadout whenever you bite the dust (because Christ knows you haven’t got time to navigate those fiddly inventory menus in the heat of battle). Still, that’s hopefully a quick fix that can be taken care of while the game is being fine-tuned in Early Access.

On that note, it might not technically be a finished product yet, but a lot of RailGod’s systems already feel extremely well-balanced and thought through. Nowhere is this more apparent than with the game’s fresh twist on that well-worn trope of the sanity meter. You see, by exposing your character to the unimaginable terrors of Hysterra —  none of which are meant for human eyes —  you risk eroding what little in the way of mental health remains to them. Much like in Dredge or Amnesia, suffering a psychological breakdown of this kind largely translates to your vision going a tad blurry, the minimap getting clouded by obscuring fog, and certain interactions being cordoned off until you’ve simmered down. Pretty standard stuff really.

Where the developers have innovated, however, is that they actually incentivise you to go to the brink of madness. Because if you can repress enough trauma, then you’ll be able to head back to your Rail God and exchange all of that bottled-up anxiety for some nice upgrades.

That’s right, there’s a writhing mass of tentacular —   languishing in one of the front carriages of the train —   that is eager to unburden you of your insanity and hoover it up for its own nourishment. And this gelatinous mound will even gift you new powers in return for this feeding.

It’s a really creative example of an in-game economy, and one that stimulates a fun risk-reward dynamic, whereby you have to decide if it’s worth putting yourself in harm’s way to bank up more currency, or if you’d be better off playing it safe and holding onto what you already have. Plus, it’s just a smart way of tying the upgrade system to those quintessential Lovecraftian themes.

Disruption on the Line

Alas, sanity isn’t the only survival responsibility you’ll have to stay on top of and, unfortunately, the rest of them aren’t done with the same inventive spark.

You’ve got the usual hunger meter (not once but twice, on account of your Rail God’s sweet tooth for “earthling mush”) crafting mechanics that prevent you from getting your hands on any decent loot without an associated grind, and base-building obligations that honestly feel like you’re being saddled with tedious chores when you could instead be out adventuring. Not to mention, your inventory space is unreasonably small, forcing you to incessantly transfer items from container to container as you attempt to secure everything on your shopping list.

It’s all very convoluted and often halts story progression dead in its tracks. For instance, you might find yourself needing to stockpile an inordinate amount of resources just to build a workbench of a specific tier that then, in turn, allows you to craft a key piece of equipment, but not before you’ve researched its blueprint over at another station first. The end result is a lot of faffing around and waiting for queued actions to be completed; an issue that is compounded if you don’t have others in your party to expedite all of that graft.

This obviously comes with the territory when you’re playing a survival game and, should you have sufficient patience, then it can be rewarding to watch as your plucky little-engine-that-could gradually evolves into a “Great Locomotive”.  However, you should know upfront what you’re getting in for here. If you only want to fight scaly monsters and immerse yourself in a bizarre realm of Shoggoth trains and the interdimensional dreamers they’re bound to, then be prepared for a lot of DIY downtime.

Indeed, your mileage with RailGods of Hysterra will vary greatly depending on how much you enjoy doing things like hacking down virtual trees. Because you’re gonna have to commit an awful lot of time to gathering timber and other such materials if you want to unlock the more interesting content that this release has to offer. Whether or not that’s an enticing proposition is going to largely come down to personal taste but, for us, the game had just enough going for it to make all of that busywork feel worthwhile.

It won’t be for everyone then, but if Troglobytes can use the Early Access window to iron out some of the kinks and maybe streamline some of the more laborious processes, we could see this one garnering a dedicated following amongst fans of survival experiences and cosmic horror alike.

Preview code provided by publisher. RailGods of Hysterra launches into Steam Early Access on May 7.

The post ‘RailGods of Hysterra’ Shows Promise, But Certain Mechanics Bog Down the Experience [Early Access Review] appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.