Developer: Chilla’s Art | Released: 2024 | Genre: Adventure, First Person
That sure was one weird ass game. I went in completely blind, not reading any user reviews on what it was about. I think I chose wisely, as my worried feeling about what I should expect worked well for this game. The premise was actually quite simple. I was in the bullet train of Shinkansen heading for Tokyo, and I needed to walk through passenger cars, looking for any anomalies.
It’s worth a try if you’re into weird and eerie adventure games, but know it’s not long – and you don’t get to see anything else than the interior of a passenger car and the toilets in between them.
After some experimentation it dawned on me that I needed to reach the front of the train and press the button to stop the train. Walking through the passenger cars had a floor sticker telling me to walk back if I spotted an anomaly among the passenger seats. If I got this right, the number of the car decreased each time I opened a new passenger car. If I missed too many anomalies in a row, a can dropped and a ghost would start chasing me down. I always managed to outrun it.
The passenger cars were exactly the same in both directions, adding to the weirdness of the game.
Anomalies could be hands somewhere, someone hugging a seat, even all passenger seats missing or plant growth all over the place. It was usually more strange and out of place than actually horrific.
Solving the first set of passenger cars revealed to be just one of two train sets. I then had to do another, with different color seats, a lady selling food and candy, one guy frozen as he put his luggage away above him, and even a dark guy with a green light as one of his eyes. Those were the normal things. Oh, and the rules were swapped. If I spotted an anomaly here, I needed to go forward instead of back.
A shame I couldn’t see the landscape rushing by fast through the train windows. They were just completely black. What I did see in the reflection of the windows was myself. A thin guy with a white shirt and a tie.
I got the first ending in less than an hour.
1. Read “weird” in RSS. (The weird is normal for me.)
2. Due to first paragraph and screenshot, felt reminded of sketches by Ken Shimura and Tomonori Jinnai (re-watched them recently, ideally with English subtitles).
3. Bookmarked this blog post quickly.