The Final Station is coming out at a good time. This short but ominous adventure finds a lone engineer piloting a rickety experimental train through plague-ridden cities filled with shadowy, zombie-like creatures, destined to deliver unknown cargo. Along the way, he stumbles across chat logs, notes, and stragglers who reveal bit by bit what’s going on in the outside world. The story that unfolds is an intriguing thriller that strikes the pitch-perfect tone for Halloween.
The engineer’s day begins like any other: he gets up, grabs his clothes, and makes his way across town to work. Once there, he runs across an antsy passenger grumbling about being late and having to take the only train at the station, the Belus-07. Inside, his co-workers complain about the government’s new use of blockers, locks that anchor a train at the station until someone enters the unlock code. It’s during the hunt for this code in the station and nearby town that players get their first hint that something is wrong. It doesn’t take long before the unsettling murmurs and oddities begin to bear out as the military reroutes the train, hurriedly loading precious cargo on board before whatever is descending in the distance reaches the city.
It’s at this point that the game settles into a pattern of alternating sections of scavenging and traveling. Stations host a variety of resources to be pilfered, including food, medicine, ammo, and saleable items. Blocker codes are often a distance from the station’s entrance, and getting to them requires exploring portions of the nearby town as well as several strange subterranean structures. Not every station is abandoned, as some along the rails are curiously still manned. However, such oases of normalcy slowly fade out as the situation gets increasingly bleaker with each stop.
The increasingly chaotic situation appears to be related to The Visitation. One hundred and six years ago, the planet suffered a limited invasion by an unknown force, and the engineer appears to be at the center of a renewed attempt on the planet. Whatever’s going on is affecting communications, infrastructure, and the people themselves. A contagion of some sort is spreading, turning people into solid-black, white-eyed monsters. Some of the transformed are small and quick, while others lumber about, explode, or sport their soldier’s kit of a helmet and body armor. They are deadly, but not indestructible. Handgun, shotgun, and rifle ammo are scattered throughout the world, and headshots take them down quickly. Chairs and monitors can also be thrown in a pinch. And, if need be, a few jabs can do the trick. A charged punch can take the weaker monsters down in a single blow, and if several become bunched, the lot of them can be dropped with a well-timed, fully charged hit. Weak walls can also be destroyed to reveal passages and hidden nooks. After everything’s been pocketed and the blocker code secured, players must make their way back to the train in order to progress to the next station.
Once on board the locomotive, the engineer must make good use of the scavenged items for those remaining passengers and for his future stops. Passengers require food and medicine, and while some can be found at stops, it will often become necessary to craft packs of both. These can be constructed using an on-board multi-purpose station that also allows access to a station map and communication with other rail workers. The train itself requires attention, with several mechanisms requiring manual repairs by turning rods, tapping buttons, and targeting weak spots to zap. The devices are located in multiple cars, and players must hustle back and forth between them, the passengers, and the food and medicine dispensers. As this commotion is going on, passengers talk amongst themselves, dropping bits of information; foreground objects zip past obscuring their vitals; and other railway members call to check in.
Running around, stamping out proverbial fires left and right, has its moments, and can certainly add a sense of urgency while traveling. Often, however, things can get out of hand not because of the player’s lack of effort but because of poor documentation and the lethargy of the passengers. No tips help the player get up to speed as to how to fix mechanical issues, and while many of them are easy to grok, a few are tricky and especially troublesome as passengers bleed and starve the entire time. Instead of being able to set a threshold of food or medicine for them to grab before having to be manually distributed, both need to be handed out at a steady pace, even more so if someone is injured. This constant running around makes it easy to miss their conversations, which often include snippets about ongoing events, as well the chance to craft medical kits and ammo. The latter is a particular sticking point given that crafting is only possible on the train. Making matters worse is the fact that the developers chose a poor color scheme for the interface. Similar colors are used to highlight and select items, and the differences in shade are so slight that it becomes difficult to tell what item or option has been chosen, especially at the distance of a few feet. The first time I ran across one of the few town vendors, I accidentally sold an item instead of buying one. While you can adjust to this by being deliberate, crafting remains spotty. A light outline around the craftable object blends in with the background, and there doesn’t appear to be any visual cue to determine when the item is ready to craft, as simply hitting the activation button doesn’t work, even with the proper amount of material. Navigating the setup requires far too much fiddling.
Aside from the chatter, other story elements are also revealed while on the train. The background art in particular does a fantastic job conveying that there’s more going on as the player scrambles from station to station, and that events are unfolding as they search for supplies and codes. Things hinted about on pieces of scrap paper or chat logs are witnessed in passing, building to a sense that the player is gradually losing ground against a massive wave washing over the land. This interplay between the written and visual is especially rewarding for those narrative scavengers who enjoy going through every terminal and note they can find. Sudden, surprising shifts in and outside of the train are also well timed to startle for maximum effect.
By the end, a winding plot develops that spans multiple genres and hints at some of my favorite works. The ending can be taken at face value, but by digging into all of the notes, names, and iconography, it becomes far more interesting. Some of this is down to the vagueness of the at-times spotty translation, but it’s mostly due to effective storytelling. Be it the survival-horror-style scavenging segments or sci-fi storyline, the travels of the Belus-07 managed to be a pleasant surprise.
Overall: 8/10
The Final Station is a satisfyingly eerie journey following an ill-fated engineer and his train, the Belus-07. The train-maintenance sections aren’t as strong as the creepier scavenging portions, but the story elements hinted at and revealed throughout keep them engaging until the end. The choice of colors for the menus are a shame, though, as they highlight the game’s weaker elements, but that’s no reason not to see the trip through to its end.
(This review is based on a copy provided by the publisher.)