My thoughts on the game "The Final Station"

The game “The Final Station” is a 16 bit 2d scroll based game featuring a conductor of a train. The story revolves around a train conductor that is transporting cargo and passengers(everyone from refugees to soldiers and scientists) during an apocalypse. The game has a simple cycle in the story. The first phase of the cycle starts with the conductor scavenging an abandoned town or a town unaffected by the apocalypse meanwhile finding refugees, supplies, or Alien zombies. The second and last phase before repeating is the conductor managing his cargo and his passengers. The game is surprisingly very good looking despite the simplicity in the sprites, game objects, and backgrounds. Together all of these aspects bring out a nice aesthetic that makes the world pop. The game is very detail oriented adding depth to the environment in the game. Personally my favorite parts of the game were the minimal story building during the train scenes. Despite the simplistic gameplay it is a very laid back game. Its sound design perfectly matches the vibe of each level and scene. Every town you go to in the game sets up their own interesting atmosphere. The state of the town was dictated based on the music played throughout the level. The towns with a desolate atmosphere had no music or this somber erie music played in the background. Meanwhile the lively towns and labs had a more peaceful tone. The gameplay of the game was very simplistic but fun. The conductor having to go to the next room was enjoyable because you could not see what was in the next room, you never knew when there were alien zombies or resources. This helped keep tensions in the game fun. I also enjoyed the train sequences. Coupled with the beautiful artwork in the background, the passenger dialogue, and the simple puzzles for the cargo it was a very laid back sequence that becomes very enjoyable despite the minimalism it's a nice change of pace from the town sequences. The progression of the story is very simple. The user can see the story progress through old tablet messages, graffiti in the world, the backgrounds in the train sequence, and passing conversations of the sprites of the game. What I like about this form of storytelling is that it shows the scope of how many people are affected by this apocalypse, it does not follow one person or a series of people in the story. By doing this it shows a less biased perspective of one of the characters. Multiple people telling the same story are less biased. Many of the refugees become trapped in buildings waiting for help(observably they usually are found by our conductor with their families). Overall I had a great time playing this game. It was a nice relaxing game. I loved the gameplay of this game. My favorite part of the entire game was the towns and the train sequences. The towns that were not abandoned had a nice setup along with stores to get upgrades. It was a nice bonus while playing the game to have the chance to get upgrades and more supplies that were rare in the game if you could not find what you needed. Personally I love a good story in games(as you probably can tell from previous posts) and gameplay that involves puzzles and strategy along with resource management. I’m happy to say this game has covered all of these qualities.