There's a free demo of this (Early Access, inevitably) game on Steam, so I tried it out. It's Raft, but in a weird sort of... Victorian... railroad... dimension. You have a train (well, you start out with just a handcar) that progresses through a strange, uh... void (hence the title) that is mysteriously full of breathable air and equipped with railroad tracks. There are what appear to be fragments of exploded buildings floating around, and you gather up various materials as your train trundles past and... make things with them, like usual. (Eventually things start trying to eat the train. Like I said, it's Raft.)

It's pretty fun for what it is.* I like the aesthetic and what little of the train-modding system is in the demo seems like something I could get pretty far down into if I had the full game. It's 30 bucks, I might pick it up sometime if I'm ever not totally busted-ass broke again. :/

--G.
* To quote the comic book ads Primus ran for one of their albums back in the day, "If you didn't like Primus before, you probably still won't."
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Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

For a bit of a dive into the game, see https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLN39y5i_H0FmuVLSeCv6yUpBd4n2NdZZr

Should give an idea of if it's worth getting, at least. Beyond the demo, that is.

...!
Stoke Mandeville, Esq & The
Victorian Ballsmiths
"Nobody Want Verdigris-
Covered Balls!"

The game is in proper release now, so I picked it up. I'm enjoying the slow-burn story it has to it. Each time you reach a new depot, you get a few more tidbits about what the heck is going on in this weird Victorian railway void. And also shot at by a lot of guys in black and red soldier gear, some of who are wearing what look suspiciously like Stahlhelm, though they all speak English. That part is a bit annoying.

I might be able to put a steam engine on my train soon, if I can figure out where the hell to put all the stuff its enormous bulk will displace.

I like the building aspect, btw. It's like setting up a shelter in any given survival game--Subnautica, say--but you take it with you.

Oh yeah, also, I have a grappling hook now, which makes the debris collection part of the game even more like Raft. :)

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

Friend who streams picked it up, apparently it came on consoles at the same time, and so I watched him play it for a bit. Looks neat and I think be RIGHT up for me.....if it wasn't for the fact that I'd freak the second I left the trolley thing, convinced that the biggest monster ever would come out of the green haze and eat me. There is also the fact that I really don't like heights and I got a distinct sensation of "up high" as well.

Which is a pity because while I have more than enough games to play, it still looked really neat. Oh well, such is life.

...!
Stoke Mandeville, Esq & The
Victorian Ballsmiths
"Nobody Want Verdigris-
Covered Balls!"

LAST EDITED ON Nov-17-25 AT 04:40 PM (EST)
 
>Friend who streams picked it up, apparently it came on consoles at the
>same time, and so I watched him play it for a bit. Looks neat and I
>think be RIGHT up for me.....if it wasn't for the fact that I'd freak
>the second I left the trolley thing, convinced that the biggest
>monster ever would come out of the green haze and eat me. There is
>also the fact that I really don't like heights and I got a distinct
>sensation of "up high" as well.

Just to note, you can turn the periodic monster attacks off (there's a slider in the settings for "shark frequency", and you can set it to zero).

The sensation of being off the train is weird at first, but I got used to it pretty quick, and I don't really get a sense of height from it because there is no falling. There's only gravity aboard the train, in depots, and on the occasional island, and if you walk off an island you automatically rope up and float, just as if you'd left the train. It's very forgiving that way.

Mind you, it's not completely safe out there, even with the shark turned off, but the rest of the risks are a lot more manageable. I'd say give it a try if you can do so without paying for it.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

>That part is a bit annoying.

Got the Proper Victorian Adventurer bit in hand, I see. "What's this? My depot is infested with Notzis? Trifling bother that is!"

"This is probably a stupid question, but . . ."

>>That part is a bit annoying.
>
>Got the Proper Victorian Adventurer bit in hand, I see. "What's this?
>My depot is infested with Notzis? Trifling bother that is!"

Sometimes they even turn up on another train and try to board! The bloody cheek of it.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

>The game is in proper release now, so I picked it up. I'm enjoying
>the slow-burn story it has to it. Each time you reach a new depot,
>you get a few more tidbits about what the heck is going on in this
>weird Victorian railway void. And also shot at by a lot of guys in
>black and red soldier gear, some of who are wearing what look
>suspiciously like Stahlhelm, though they all speak English.
>That part is a bit annoying.

IIRC from watching a couple people stream the early access version, your character's Russian. So the "speaking English" is almost certainly being done as "your character understands this, so we'll use a language the player understands."

>IIRC from watching a couple people stream the early access version,
>your character's Russian.

There's no indication I can remember in the opening of the game as to the Engineer's nationality, but he/she does start out by being assigned to a long stint at an impossibly remote location somewhere in the frozen north, which does feel a lot like being posted to Siberia.

>So the "speaking English" is almost
>certainly being done as "your character understands this, so we'll use
>a language the player understands."

Now that I have 30+ hours in the full game, I can report that I was wrong about that part. The soldiers' voices are heavily filtered, like the HECU marines in Half-Life or PubSec agents in HL2 (they even make a sound similar to the "flatline" noise PubSec guys make when you kill them), and at first I thought they were speaking barely comprehensible English, but they're not. I don't think they're speaking any real language; more likely it's the devs' idea of the vocal equivalent of the made-up alphabet all the in-game signage is written in.

The story is slowly getting deeper and stranger. I'm digging it, although one of the most recent revelations I ran across was disturbing and made me very sad. Not in an "I'm going to ragequit" sense, though. It makes sense within the context of the game, it's just... upsetting.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.