Post-apocalyptic worlds can be so depressing. Everyone around you is either dead or dying. The life you once had is gone, but it can never be forgotten. Every once in a while you come across a small settlement that gives you hope that life is still possible, only to be reminded by the smell of rotting corpses that things will never go back to the way they were before.
Well, what happened when developer Do My Best decided to take this horrific type of world and add a train simulation to it? We are all graced with The Final Station. The Final Station is a 2D, survival management game that involves leading a group of survivors across a destroyed wasteland towards safety. Along the way, the protagonist finds a tangled web of deceit, conspiracy, and death.
The Final Station’s story is told through a beautifully rendered world that does pixel art very well. I find a lot of pixel art to be very grainy and offensive to eye. But more on base with retro styling, The Final Station utilizes this art style to capture the tone of the zombiefied world. For example, the scenic vistas provide a sense of scale while riding on the train through the wasteland. The backgrounds are varied and unique making the world feel incredibly large and empty.
Because of a cataclysmic event, the human population has slowly turned into creatures that make up the main problem to overcome in the game. These silhouetted shells of former humans come in a few different forms. The most common is the normal zombie which moves slowly and is easily able to dodge or kill. Later, I was introduced to small zombies that were extremely fast and attacked quickly and constantly. Each new type of zombie added to the tenseness of the cramped city surroundings and the complexity of the puzzle element of survival management. The reason why each zombie had a different personality is very interesting, and it takes exploring the levels to discover the meaning behind this phenomenon.
I found the zombies to be horrifying. These creatures are just a black form with bright, white eyes. Their lack of features makes the imagination run wild of what these former humans now look like. The first time a door busted open and two lumbering flesh bags came wandering towards me, I felt as if I was in real danger. The zombies took multiple slugs to the chest before I was able to take them down. The intensity continued to build as I quickly realized that bullets are extremely limited, as well as health restoration items.
The basic gameplay loop included riding the train to a stop, collecting supplies, then boarding the train. One I reached the stop, I would jump of the train and have to search the city for the gate code to open the gate and continue down the tracks. At these stops I sometimes found survivors that I could convince to join me on the train to make it to the next safe zone. I had a handgun and a shotgun, as well as a melee attack, to keep me alive through the levels. I had to quickly switch between smacking a slow zombie to make him stumble backward, using my few bullets to stop the quick slashers, or utilizing a hit-and-run tactic to eradicate exploding zombies.
At each stop I had to loot boxes and bodies to find crafting materials, bullets, food, and med kits. The crafting materials were used on the train to create more ammunition and med kits. On the train, I was tasked with keeping my passengers alive. Each passenger had a unique bio that I could view by standing next to them. As the train rolled along, they all required food to stay alive, and some required medical attention. Providing them with food and medical packs kept them alive long enough to reach the final station. The other factor I had to keep in mind was that while these helpless passengers were complaining about a bump on their head, the train was slowly falling apart. The ventilator, fans, battery, and cargo all would go on the fritz during each train ride. The way to solve this was to regulate the voltage on each feature to bring it back down to its proper position.
The entire train section was my first real problem with the game. The train sections lacked any sort of fun factor and sometimes felt downright tedious. The train would continuously break, but only one section at a time. Never did it become a race against time where everything was going wrong as the tension built with the passengers. It regularly was give out food to the people closest to death, then stand in front of the broken train part and continuously press A until I reached my stop.
While the stops were incredibly varied, the train portions were noticeably similar. An example of the contrast is that while on the train, I never once ran out of food or med kits since I always searched the stops thoroughly. However, at the stops, I regularly ran out of bullets and had to result to using chairs, TVs, and exploding barrels to fight my way out of claustrophobic sewer systems. The characters on the train were conversing regularly, but I never had time to read the dialogue since I was too busy with fixing the train, so I missed 95% of it. If there were unique story elements in these parts, I missed them all.
The Final Station has no voice actors, everything is told through speech bubbles that appear above the speakers’ head. It really wasn’t a problem, except on the train as mentioned before. When in the city safe zones or at the train stops, I was given time to read through letters, notes, and story pages that really built on the story. It just provided another contrast between the city and the train sections.
The music of The Final Station is fantastic. The sound blending between the gunshots, zombie moans, and the background ambiance was spot on and only helped create a believable world. Each area had a slightly different soundtrack that ramped up the hopelessness each progressively difficult area. I was as much afraid of the zombies I could see as the promise of zombies that the music made.
The other big downfall of the game is that it is incredibly short. I was able to beat the entire game in just over two hours. Now I am the first to say that length does not equal quality, but I think the length does hinder this title. The story feels extremely rushed at the end, and the big emotional payoff was hampered by the quickness of the final act. I do not think that the game needed another 5 hours, but at least enough time to flesh out the ending so that I wasn’t left with such a sour taste in my mouth.
Summary
Overall, The Final Station succeeds in producing a unique and fun survival game. Even though the short length severely hurts the story and the train sections steal from the fun, I feel there is enough in the zombie infested portions to redeem the final product. The beautiful art direction, captivating music, and gripping tone create a world that I would not mind visiting again in order to search for any story points I may have missed while running from the horde. Even with its flaws, The Final Station should not be overlooked.
Joshua was a regular ICXM contributor between 2016–2017, publishing 42 articles across game reviews, and Xbox news. Their work focused on hands-on reviews, platform commentary, and breaking-news reporting during the Xbox One X launch year and Microsoft’s wider Play Anywhere / UWP gaming initiative.