Recommendation: Don't Ever Buy

[Inkidu]

So I tried this out on the Epic Game Store, because loyalty to one monolithic digital distribution platform is stupid, so why not shop around.

And I'm here to tell you. I played one hour of Voidtrain and was bored to absolute tears. My recommendation is a hard forever pass. Even if you weren't getting it because of the absurd politics of which obscenely rich digital storefront happens to have it, this is just a bad game.

First and foremost: The game does not respect your time. It does not at all. The crafting tech tree feels stretched out to exceedingly asinine levels of granularity. Resource acquisition is beyond slow (you're stuck on a trolley car at the start, drifting along on rails grabbing whatever you can happen to spot). You'll have to collect upwards of 40 scrap to make ingots of various stripes and you have no space on your starting car to even run two smelters at once. The problem is that those 40 ingots are used in research and building of things like nuts, bolts, gears, copper tubing and wiring, and even when you're done with all that you have to make a chemical lab, you have room for only one small storage box in addition to all this which can hold four stacks (one stack is five items). It's dumb beyond belief.

It's a eurojank busywork game that beyond the kooky aesthetic does nothing mechanically to separate itself from the dozens of other floating-numbers watch production bars fill up survival games we've all played. In fact it actively makes itself worse because you're stuck quite literally ON THE RAILS.

I cannot understate just how hard you should pass this one by. I've played games my whole life and I'd like to think I've developed a feel for Early Access stuff that's going nowhere, and this game is so flawed on a fundamental level I don't think they can fix it without starting from scratch mechanically.

[Aedryn]

"I played one hour of Voidtrain and was bored to absolute tears."

Somebody is unfamiliar with how survival games work.

[Inkidu]

Originally posted by Aedryn:

"I played one hour of Voidtrain and was bored to absolute tears."

Somebody is unfamiliar with how survival games work.

Hah ha, no. It's just a bad survival game.

[WhyKlef]

Honestly, I can agree with OP. I guess I've been more patient but this feels synthetically tedious for the sake of saying: "This game has content.". To be fair, it is early access and the dev(s) have time to review the balance but right now, it's painfully slow for what is ultimately not so pleasant.

The thing is this game honestly as an amazing concept, a clever idea... And it almost stops there. It sounds harsh but it honestly is not far from the truth.

I'm 7hrs into it so far and it's been 6h15m of constant, repetitive, non-rewarding, mat gathering to what hardly provides a sensation of achieving something.

Think of what you can do in 7hrs in the following games: Minecraft, Raft, The Forest, Subnautica... And let me put this in comparison to what 7hrs in Voidtrain gave me.

Minecraft - You have built a foundation of a 6x6 house (including walls) and currently raising the walls, still using wood equipment, only have one chest to store your things, no oven and certainly no meaningful enemies or fights hindering you, you're just awfully slow at gathering mats.

Raft - You're still dragging mats with the hook on a 2x2, you're starting to turn water and cook food, seen 2 island but still don't have the axe to chop wood

The Forest - You've cut two trees, stab a weird dude that didn't fight back and you chase animals around. Oh and you managed to open a travel case by hitting with a stick.

Subnautica - You've been going in a circle never leaving sight of your drop pod and gathering a dozen mats but it don't lead to much.

Honestly, this game is beyond tedious and not in a nice way, not in a rewarding way, I should add that I wasn't playing alone, I've spent my entire 7hrs with a friend, which helps fighting off the extremely boring gameplay but yeah.

It's cool for the first hour but even during that first hour, I was telling my friend: "I hope they elevate the gameplay, like I can do this for 2-3 hours but if it keeps like that, it'll be hard."

It's been 7 freaking hours and I am still gathering mats using nearly the exact same method and it's not really all that much more efficient because there is the same amount of mats as when we had just started... Things just ask for way more of it.

It might become good but it needs A LOT of work with core elements, we're not talking a texture or two that is glitchy here, we are talking about the actual pace and core growth of the game is flawed at the time being...

To give you an idea, you have a stop station every X distance, eventually you have the most boring AI fighting you off, as if this game shines for it's shooting (it sincerely does not) but anyway, you can find gun parts off of your enemies.

I have found about 20 gun parts, out of 20, a single part improved my gun ever so slightly. But even without that upgrade, I never struggled, I never came close to dying, I never felt under duress, it's a survival game but for what? I swear, Minecraft on Peaceful is more challenging than this game.

Anyway, I'm ranting at this point cause again, the concept is so freaking nice but dang is it in dire need of purpose and balancing... Give it a year and look it up again cause for now, it's the kind of Early Access that could very well make you turn away and never look back with how terrible it is.

[Alkado_O]

Originally posted by Inkidu:

Originally posted by Aedryn:

"I played one hour of Voidtrain and was bored to absolute tears."

Somebody is unfamiliar with how survival games work.

Hah ha, no. It's just a bad survival game.

Good game. The most important thing is to play with friends. Excellent humor and stylization. And if you don't have friends, it's not a developer's problem.

[Inkidu]

Originally posted by Alkado_O:

Originally posted by Inkidu:

Hah ha, no. It's just a bad survival game.

Good game. The most important thing is to play with friends. Excellent humor and stylization. And if you don't have friends, it's not a developer's problem.

Real friends don't let their friends play Voidtrain. I have warned my friends away from this game.

[Krazed_1]

Z1 Gaming You Tube channel makes it look pretty interesting. Yes I realise its edited to make it look not to boring.
To slow for some maybe just right for others. Each to there own.
I like the graphics, puzzles, crafting (slow as it may be) and not having to eat or drink every 5 minutes.
Most of all I don't want a game that's over in 20 or 30 hours.
Hopefully it will have some re-play-ability.
Epic got it first cause they don't take as big a cut as Steam does. Sad really. I will wait for Steam version. I like all my games on one platform.

[Atomizer]

Originally posted by Krazed_1:

Z1 Gaming You Tube channel makes it look pretty interesting. Yes I realise its edited to make it look not to boring.
To slow for some maybe just right for others. Each to there own.
I like the graphics, puzzles, crafting (slow as it may be) and not having to eat or drink every 5 minutes.
Most of all I don't want a game that's over in 20 or 30 hours.
Hopefully it will have some re-play-ability.
Epic got it first cause they don't take as big a cut as Steam does. Sad really. I will wait for Steam version. I like all my games on one platform.

No, Epic got it first because they paid big money up front to prevent other stores from selling it, the cut literately has nothing to do with it.

[Krazed_1]

Yeah Epic paid them to sell there game ... good business model that ....
Never heard of Nearga, the makers of VoidTrain, until now. I'm guessing Epic paid them a relatively small amount for 1 year exclusivity.

[Lucas_R]

1 hour? bro didnt even reached the 4th station gg

[FlareFluffsune]

Don't own the game just checking discussions to see if its worth my time buying.

Point of fact: If a game is ONLY good to play with friends. Its a bad game. Especially if it has single player as an option.

[Inkidu]

Originally posted by Lucas_R:

1 hour? bro didnt even reached the 4th station gg

More importantly, I didn't want to reach the fourth station. Game's boring.

[OriginalGrubby]

Originally posted by Inkidu:

So I tried this out on the Epic Game Store, because loyalty to one monolithic digital distribution platform is stupid, so why not shop around.

It's more about being disgusted at the way Epic does business, simply buying early releases is a bit disgusting imo. I'm personally happy to wait until they are just released on Steam if that's how that company does business.

With that said, I have Epic installed, and I have a collection of about 50+ games thanks to them just giving away games non stop. Have never, and will never give them money, but I'll take $1,500+ worth of free games from them.

As for this game, I haven't tried it, but I can agree. I have watched a few people play it and it's basically float away from your train, big something up, drive forward, float away and pick something up, rinse and repeat.

Side note, I am a bit disgusted with devs who actually sell out to Epic in that way. By the time they hit Steam a year later, they go on sale a soon after, and they lose a TON of money. Seems smarter to simply release it to everyone at the same time and make all of the money at the start.

[Bullymays]

If you enjoy Raft, you will like this game a lot. I actually like it better than Raft already. It tries to do something a little different than other games which should be commended. People are ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ about grinding mats, but I haven't really noticed that bad of a grind. I mean, its a survival game, if you were given all the mats right away, wtf is the point of progression?

I haven't encountered any bugs in around 14 hours of gameplay, nice crafting, ability to craft different guns, casual game (easy to pause or just gather mats while watching tv), interesting puzzles, active developer.

I think its really a great game and most my reviews on games are probably negative.

[Inkidu]

Relevant video I came across between making this thread and now. I think it makes a lot of good points, and I think it highlights some of the areas where Voidtrain falls down in the craftings systems department.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nj7EaryBgak

Off the top of my head, the use of things and getting them into the world is tricky. Because you're on rails you don't exactly get to explore, and the system right now is so highly granular with low automation that what you're building doesn't feel like progress so much as wasting time.

[Kalvix]

Man, I wish Epic wasn't so badly made that they had user reviews so you could put up a review there instead, or even a forum so you could put this on their forum. I honestly think I could make a better store/launcher in an afternoon.