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Train sim created by just one person is being called the best ever made
https://store.steampowered.com/app/4630570/RUNNING_TRAIN/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/4630570/RUNNING_TRAIN/
- dyauspitr 3mo agoIt’s beautiful. I wonder how much an LLM was involved if at all.
- therobots927 3mo agoI’m wondering the same thing. I’ve been thinking about getting into solo LLM game dev. I don’t know the first thing about it
- blipvert 3mo agoYou’re all set!
- therobots927 3mo agoA pattern I’ve found useful in other settings is starting with code for an existing “game” that sort of resembles what you want to make and then modifying components until you have a whole new game but it shares similar infrastructure to the original. So you benefit from the existing system and avoid a lot of problems.
- LollipopYakuza 3mo agoWhat would be your added value?
- therobots927 3mo agoThe ideas and aesthetics
- shermantanktop 3mo agoThat's the part that is visible to everyone else, so that's the part that an LLM can see. That means someone else can clone your ideas and aesthetics. The ol' double-edged sword.
- therobots927 3mo agoIt only works when starting with open source to show to LLM. To monetize my modification, I would not make mine open source. If the licensing allows for it I’m fine.
- thesuitonym 3mo agoIf the LLM does the work, why should someone pay you when they could use their own tokens?
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- esseph 3mo agoEverything. The story, how the game works, the art assets, voice lines, music, etc. Programming is like 10% of a game. The world building and UX is the juice. Anybody can make Lord of the Rings, but there's only one.
- n64controller 3mo agoAbsolute nonsense. There is no cookie-cutter formula for game development, despite what the idea guys think. Mario 64 was literally just Mario in a single small room until the last six months of development. They focused purely on the actual game - the mechanics, physics, movesets, items, and enemies - inside that tiny room until it felt perfect. Then, in one final push, they quickly slapped together all the levels and the storyline at the very end. We are very quickly going to see the reality: games are made by programmers. Everyone else who has spent decades comfortably riding on the programmers backs is being replaced by AI. This includes the artists, the junior programmers, the testers, all of them. The future isn't bloated teams, it's going to be just one lone genius (or a small group of programming geniuses banding together) and his magnum opus across the board.
- esseph 3mo agoMost of my favorite games don't have physics engines, and many are story sequels. One of my favorites is the modern Equivalent to Myst. Good luck with your idea tho I vouched for you
- LollipopYakuza 3mo agoThis is wrong on many aspects and is disrepectful towards all the indispensables professions involved in the making of a game.
- markdown 3mo agoStep 1: acquire land for datacenter.
- Schiendelman 3mo agoI'd be happy to help you! I'm working on a game myself. My first piece of advice is: Pick one mechanic or idea, and ship it all the way to a player (a friend) to see if it's legible or fun.
- therobots927 3mo agoThanks for the offer! Unfortunately I don’t have the time right now, but I am going over some ideas at a high level. Are you building a single player or multiplayer game?
- Schiendelman 3mo agoMultiplayer, collaborative! Here's a Testflight if you're interested: https://reverdure.yourstrategy.co https://reverdure.yourstrategy.co
- marginalia_nu 3mo ago[flagged]
- LollipopYakuza 3mo agoI wish this was true. That AI slop couldn't reach prod and polute our virtual stores and assets marketplaces.
- dyauspitr 3mo agoPretty much nothing has shipped without LLM involvement over the last 6-12 months
- bitwize 3mo agoIf the Touhou games or Cave Story were released today, all of Hackernews would be like "dude, I wonder what their LLM workflow is like!" Japanese solo hikikomori devs have been putting out insane stuff since long before LLMs emerged.
- Ferret7446 3mo agoNot really, those games are very simple code wise. A high schooler could do it (source me). You could make a bullet hell game engine as a project in an intro CS course. The hard part is the content in the game, and ZUN was already a composer. That just leaves the code which is easy, and the bullet patterns, which ZUN clearly improved at through his earlier games. (and the art, which is famously bad though endearing)
- sarchertech 3mo ago> Not really, those games are very simple code wise. A high schooler could do it (source me). That very much depends on how much they did themselves. If they used unity, and went very light on the simulation, sure. > You could make a bullet hell game engine as a project in an intro CS course. No you couldn’t. Well you could but it wouldn’t be appropriate for actual beginners unless you stripped it down so much that calling it an engine was meaningless.
- nomel 3mo ago> No you couldn’t. Well you could but it wouldn’t be appropriate for actual beginners unless you stripped it down so much that calling it an engine was meaningless. You definitely can. One of the assignments in the CS intro course I took was a bullet hell game. "calling it an engine was meaningless" is an opinion that requires ignoring the fundamentals of what a game engine is.
- sarchertech 3mo agoA game engine is a framework that allows you to create games. Assuming you don’t have tons of content (and I’m sure you didn’t in an intro CS class), building a game is an easier task than building a game engine. Let me ask you this. What were the parameters of your assignment? What libraries were you allowed to use.
- dash2 3mo ago> including support for the Zuiki MASCON, a bespoke peripheral for train driving sims. This just makes me feel so glad to be alive today!
- busfahrer 3mo agoI'm on the fence because I have a TSC-X controller and it's unclear if it's supported. Somebody on the forums posted a tool that converts generic joystick axes to keypresses, but not sure how well that works.
- lightedman 3mo ago"Somebody on the forums posted a tool that converts generic joystick axes to keypresses, but not sure how well that works." Joy2Key has been a staple for many a gamer for a while, and reliable. I've used it to control my mouse, even, from my gamepad.
- danielbarla 3mo ago> Somebody on the forums posted a tool that converts generic joystick axes to keypresses, but not sure how well that works. I don't have a TSC-X, but did frown a little bit that there wasn't a generic support for controllers with plain axes. I have a VKB STECS, and basically a 85% of train sims need a workaround. The good news: Claude Code threw together a working prototype for me in a few minutes that had me mapping the two axes (power / brakes) perfectly. It's really a low barrier to entry these days. Can confirm that this game is amazing with it.
- theatrus2 3mo agoYeah, love that is just works. I'm working on a bit of a hobby project to rebuild a beefier Mascon. Mainly inspired by how much I enjoyed Running Train
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- derdi 3mo agoThe game in question is https://store.steampowered.com/app/4630570/RUNNING_TRAIN/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/4630570/RUNNING_TRAIN/
- dang 3mo agoLink added to toptext. Thanks!
- wolvoleo 3mo agoI wonder if it's got VR. There's not many train Sims that do even though the sim community in general has really embraced VR.
- LollipopYakuza 3mo agoNot yet. It's been asked but since the original dev is doing all the work, he has to prioritize the backlog.
- wolvoleo 3mo agoOh ok I'll still try it out though. But hopefully it'll come one day
- Insanity 3mo agoI never got the appeal for these sim games. From the screenshots, it looks like a beautiful game and I guess I could enjoy the visuals for an hour or 2. But I don't see how it'd entertain me for hours on end. If someone here is into these sim games, what's the reason you keep going back to them?
- fragmede 3mo agoEscapism fun. Being able to do the fun parts of something without the bullshit of doing it for real.
- wizzwizz4 3mo agoIf you fall asleep while playing Truck Simulator, nobody dies.
- lelandfe 3mo agoThat depends upon where one is playing Truck Simulator
- antonvs 3mo agoNow I'm imagining a Boeing 777 pilot playing Truck Simulator because he's bored while the plane is landing.
- shermantanktop 3mo agoATC will have to use a CB radio to get his attention.
- stouset 3mo agoEnder’s Truck Simulator
- LollipopYakuza 3mo agoI have never played any train sim, but I read video game press that this one hits different. A lot of train sim are about building the rail network, where Running Train focuses on driving. The scenery (dozens of kilometers of japanese railway) is beautiful and it reproduces the japanese railway system realistically.
- kotberg 3mo ago[dead]
- alwa 3mo agoFor the uninitiated: https://www.popularmechanics.com/culture/gaming/a28954/new-japanese-train-simulator/ https://www.popularmechanics.com/culture/gaming/a28954/new-j... A full-scale arcade version in this genre, evolving since 1996. Realistic controls, some seem even to include train crew uniforms you can wear while driving…
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- ColdStream 3mo agoPretty much, but no complaints there.
- derr1 3mo agoThat's a good thing.
- arjie 3mo agoThis is a 1 person job?! It looks practically photorealistic. That's absolutely wild.
- smusamashah 3mo agoNot to dismiss the effort by dev, but all Unreal engine games look photoreal these days. My point is that photorealism does not show effort these days.
- Sharlin 3mo agoNo engine in the world can make bad assets look good.
- VikingCoder 3mo agoEskil Steenberg's LOVE has entered the chat. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-A8xvFKaRA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-A8xvFKaRA
- corysama 3mo agoHis Behind the Scenes video for LOVE is one of my favorite developer vids ever. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=f90R2taD1WQ https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=f90R2taD1WQ
- uxhacker 3mo agoAre we talking about train engines or games engines:)
- arjie 3mo agoOh wow, I didn't know engines provided that much functionality. Thank you.
- rcoveson 3mo agoMost of the review is about the art assets, and I doubt the big ones (e.g. the trains themselves) are off-the-rack Unreal assets. An engine like Unreal 5 will cast your assets in harsh relief. Which is to say, if your game's assets look custom and look good in Unreal 5, it does indeed demonstrate effort and skill.
- oxonia 3mo agoWindows only? :-(
- nomel 3mo ago2026 Steam hardware survey [1]: Windows: 94.10% Linux: 3.68% macOS: 2.21% [1] Click the "OS Version" row to expand the table, https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Software-Survey-Welcome-to-Steam https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Softw...
- simondotau 3mo agoSomething of a self-reinforcing statistic. Steam is rarely installed on Mac because there’s hardly any point doing so.
- bena 3mo agoProud 2.2%er But I also have had it installed via Crossover at some points to check out a Windows-only game. Which I just realize also skews the statistic because Crossover basically creates a Windows VM.
- paxys 3mo agoMacs have a single digit market share globally, so even if people started installing games on them the needle wouldn't move much.
- simondotau 3mo agoMac market share is closer to 20% when you exclude machines installed in offices and enterprises. Some estimates put the number as high as 30% in North America. The fact that the Steam number is as high as it is, despite the extreme lack of compatible content, is noteworthy.
- y1n0 3mo agoSteam needs a statistic for Wine/crossover. I play tons of games on my mac via steam through crossover. It's crazy that multiple layers of translation work so well.
- hyperific 3mo ago>And oh my goodness, it’s so pretty. Am I the only one that thinks the word "pretty" is overused to describe the visual quality and artistry of games? I see this word thrown around often and it feels so low-effort.
- anyfoo 3mo agoIt's a simple word that does the job. No need to overthink it.
- f3408fh 3mo agoI always wonder how a solo developer can source high quality assets like these, plus develop a full game with them. In this case did the dev create the assets or did they purchase them from a freelancer? How much would purchasing this many assets cost?
- Jhsto 3mo agoAnecdote, but I recall my friend saying he worked on freelancing assets to some train game and showed me some pictures of the said game. Unless there are more of these in existence, I think it was this.
- altairprime 3mo agoPlease tell him thank you from us all :)
- abrookewood 3mo ago100% they look incredible.
- n6242 3mo agoWell, there are 864 other train sim games on Steam right now, so there are quite a few others in existence.
- jamesfinlayson 3mo agoI thought it was kind of commoditised these days - there's an Unreal asset store I think? Probably one for Unity as well.
- topgrain2 3mo agoAlmost every time I see a halfway polished “solo developer” game, they did not do all the work themselves. Especially, they usually hire out the music, maybe other sounds, and much of the artwork. Sometimes they also have freelancers doing marketing and such. Sometimes even some paid help writing the software. I highlight this not to bring those developers down, but because I think it’s important people understand how these things actually come to be, so they aren’t discouraged to try themselves by thinking they ought to actually be doing 100% of the work solo. That’s pretty rare.
- whywhywhywhy 3mo agoGame looks amazing from a solo dev but this article is terrible, like the journo didn't even play the game they just watched the game.
- dmix 3mo agoAll journalism is terrible these days. They just want a catchy headline for the ad view and nothing else matters, including whether the headline is true or not.
- AdamN 3mo agoPaid journalism is still often good (Bloomberg, FT). But yeah if you're just going to free sites it's the same as the free newspapers they used to give out for free in the subway - a few salacious articles, one or two ostensibly 'real news' pieces, and a bunch of ads.
- Jtarii 3mo agoThere is like 1 or 2 actual "video game journalists" everyone else is just a glorified blogger.
- torginus 3mo agoThe irony being, that youtubers and Twitch personalities have almost certainly played the games they are reviewing. But they are considered at least a 'rung' lower than games journalists when it comes to how much access they have, and how much their opinion matters professionally.
- mrguyorama 3mo agoThere's an entire microcosm on youtube of former games journalists, generating a variety of content from good to slop. Most of them are from when "Games journalist" was still a classically trained journalist, and had real credentials and knowledge of how to critique the art form. Which is why they were generally pushed out, to be replaced with know nothings who are just there to parrot a script.
- 3mo ago
- epx 3mo agoAnother notable, if old, train simulator from Japan is OpenBVE. It was easy to model railroads on it. Many short Brazilian routes were/are modeled in OpenBVE. It is particularly convincing since it simulates well the typical lateral wobbling that metric trains are known for.
- culi 3mo agoDo you mean actual Brazilian railway track engineers used this game to plan/develop actual routes? Or just that you can play Brazilian routes in the game?
- epx 3mo agoJust to play the routes.
- iggldiggl 3mo agoopenBVE's not directly Japanese, it's an open-source re-implementation of the original BVE 2 and 4, which is.
- ofjcihen 3mo agoI have almost no appreciation for trains and I’m incredibly interested in trying this.
- freetime2 3mo agoLooks beautiful and I am filled with an instant sense of nostalgia looking at the screenshots. Personally if I were going to adopt a nerdy train hobby, I would tend more toward train photography. Recently train photographers have been in the news for mostly bad reasons [1], but I have also seen train photographers setting up in rural locations and the scenery looks stunning and also totally chill. The problems arise when people gather en masse to get the "iconic" shots that have been probably been photographed a million times before. Or just go out and actually ride a bunch of different routes. It's been a long time since I've done it, but just riding a local or express train through a scenic area is delightful. Of course there's no reason that true train afficianados can't do all of the above, as well as building model trains! [1] https://petapixel.com/2025/12/15/japanese-railway-pleads-with-photographers-to-stop-being-dangerously-dumb/ https://petapixel.com/2025/12/15/japanese-railway-pleads-wit...
- Loughla 3mo agoThe one thing that is keeping me from riding the routes that I believe would be the must fun/scenic is the OBSCENE cost of those tickets. Granted, these aren't commuter tickets. I would love a trip across the high plains and through the mountains by train. Just like I would love to take a cruise from the bottom of the Mississippi to the top. But them tickets is too high.
- freetime2 3mo agoIn Japan it's quite reasonable to ride local trains. I've been meaning to do a trip along the recently re-opened Tadami Line [1], for example. The one way cost for the full 4-hour, 135km trip is only ¥2,750 ($17). Though when you add in the costs of getting to the start/end of the line, overnight accomodations, and potentially the cost of getting to Japan first - it gets quite a bit more expensive. But staying at a little guesthouse along the way is also part of the charm. [1] https://fukushima.travel/blogs/tadami-line-5-sights-you-shouldnt-miss/33 https://fukushima.travel/blogs/tadami-line-5-sights-you-shou...
- WangComputers 3mo agoI read the title and assumed this was going to be about Transport Tycoon.
- culi 3mo agoThe dev is a person from Indonesia (Rizky Nova) who's device has 16GB of ram. Being able to use the Unreal Engine for free to develop this is awesome. This couldn't have happened 10 years ago.
- 101008 3mo agoI think this is incredible, and I am so happy for him, he deserves all the praise he gets (and maybe more). I will sin and make this about me, briefly, but just to say that when I was a kid/teenager with a really slow computer, a) I enjoyed coding much more, b) I think I was a way better programmer. Constraints make you better, you have to be smarter. I miss those times.
- ffsm8 3mo agoWell, nothing is easier then adding constraints. Removing them is what's difficult - so why don't you add them back if it makes you a better programmer and you enjoy doing it more? Personally, I think the reason you enjoyed it more as a teenager is just down to the fact you were fully in control of what to do and had no external pressure to earn money etc, so if anything you had less constraints - at least from my point of view
- rablackburn 3mo ago> Well, nothing is easier then adding constraints. Which is why dieting and quitting smoking are famously easy things to do! ;) There's something to be said for the "scrappyness" of resource limitations inflicted upon you when solving some problem. A sense of Triumph against the Universe itself is a nice pay-off
- vitorfblima 3mo agoSmoking and eating unhealthy food are constraints to life! ;)
- 3mo ago
- declan_roberts 3mo agoSo is it fun to play or just fun to look at? I'm getting "Mixtape" vibes from the article (not good!)
- ZiiS 3mo ago'Gameplay' isn't what this is about. The is literally an option to turn it off. For some it will be thousands of hours of fun.
- lwkl 3mo agoYou probably won't enjoy it because it's a sim game and not fun in the same way Super Mario Bros is. But it's probably more interactive than Mixtape since you are operating a train. I personally probably won't play Mixtape or this game but both look like good experiences to me if you are in the respective target audience.
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- kleiba2 3mo ago> one-person development team :)
- small_model 3mo agoLooks very realistic, however I have to question the whole premise of a train sim, trains seem to be the most boring vehicle to choose here, they run in tracks so not much freedom, basically accelerate and brake.
- alt227 3mo agoThen you know nothing about trains and the track networks they run on, which is probably why you dont find them interesting. Thats fine, just realise there is much more to trains than accelerate and brake :)
- small_model 3mo agoJust my experience from being on trains, they accelerate, cruise, slow down and stop am I missing anything? They must be ripe for automation.
- rob74 3mo agoJust my experience from being on planes, they take off, cruise, slow down and land, am I missing anything? ...seriously, 99%+ of the job of a conductor (and of a pilot) could be automated, the reason you still have a person (or two) in the cockpit is the rest of the time. As the saying goes, "flying is hours and hours of boredom sprinkled with a few seconds of sheer terror". And the same is also valid for trains. There are automated trains, but AFAIK all of them are metros or people movers where the whole system is closed off (platform doors etc.) and track conditions are closely monitored. I'm not aware of an automated train running on a "traditional" track network.
- small_model 3mo agoCmon planes move is 3 axis (yes trains technically do but not via the controls) and take-off landing is a lot more complex than leaving/stopping at a station, the comparison is crazy.
- pjc50 3mo ago
- davedx 3mo agoThis YouTube is a pretty good walk through of the gameplay: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxGEMOzWt8w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxGEMOzWt8w
- benny_s 3mo agoLooks great. Too bad that steam deck isn’t supported, I hope they’ll add it.
- astrobe_ 3mo ago> is in fact set in a fictional region of Japan, but is created so lovingly that you’ll believe it’s real life. This is actually a major cheat. Realism is expensive, and exposes your creation to the equivalent of the "uncanny valley" for vehicle simulation - the simulated world is never accurate enough and you can't help but notice the differences with reality. E.g. if you see generic buildings ("autogen") near a location you know IRL, the simulation feels immediately sloppy. Yet, as long as I'm not interested in visiting real places, I would go for a vehicle simulation in a fictional world any day. I wouldn't mind if the vehicles were also fictional, as long as they require some technique to drive them. What matters in games is challenge and mastery, but not what you master; your RTS, FPS or chess skills have very little value IRL. > Zoom out far enough—and for some reason it will let you—and you see the tiles, the roads that don’t line up, and the various tricks and techniques that allow it to look so realistic from low down. But don’t do that! That’s silly. This is a train sim, not a plane sim, you’ve no business in the sky. OpenBVE one-upped BVE train sim with external cameras, and as a result you see all this too. In my eyes, they sort of miss the point of a train simulation: the view point is normally attached to the driver, so one can use all sorts of tricks to avoid having to "paint the entire wall" - which is quite important if you count on a community of fan modders who have limited resources.
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- ImJasonH 3mo agoI fell down a YouTube hole and watched all of these Derail Valley playthroughs: https://youtu.be/JSONttyEJ4o https://youtu.be/JSONttyEJ4o Highly recommend if you like having something interesting on in the background.
- vim-guru 3mo agoVery impressive! Well done
- mlok 3mo agoI like this one, too : https://alexanderperrin.com.au/paper/shorttrip/ https://alexanderperrin.com.au/paper/shorttrip/
- notjustanymike 3mo agoI own it and played it. It's good, very pretty, but highly repetitive. It's one 40km track, two trains, and most of the scenery is the same. It is one step above a Unreal Engine tech demo (e.g. the matrix demo from a few years back). For one person it's impressive, but it won't knock the major players down any time soon.
- chaostheory 3mo agoUnreal 5 is amazing with photo realism. Bodycam uses this feature well too
- Aachen 3mo agoThe article says the game should cost 18$ (should be ~15.74€), but it's actually showing as 19.50€ aka 22.29 USD. Does anyone know what's going on there? Is Stream charging more due to refund laws or something? I can't find a website for the developer, also nothing listed in the Indonesian Wikipedia article. Sadly no way to buy it directly and give them 100% of the money in their currency
- Cuuugi 3mo agoDifferent regions have different pricing unfortunately. https://partner.steamgames.com/pricing/explorer?l=english&utm_source=chatgpt.com https://partner.steamgames.com/pricing/explorer?l=english&ut...
- srjek 3mo agoArticle was published close to the game's Steam release, and there was a 10% discount on launch. https://steamdb.info/app/4630570/ https://steamdb.info/app/4630570/. It's 20 USD now, and I assume the remaining difference is simply due to specifics around setting prices on steam and currency conversion.
- Tade0 3mo agoIn my region of the world this title (and also the title of being "the worst ever made") was reserved for the unnecessarily detailed electric locomotive simulator MaSzyna: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1033030/MaSzyna/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/1033030/MaSzyna/ Turns out that such a vehicle, even though simple in principle, has quite the startup procedure and a layman would have trouble making it go.
- nsxwolf 3mo agoMicrosoft used to have "Microsoft Train Simulator". It was being shown off at E3 in 2001 in a dark little corner, by this older gentlemen who for I know may have been the producer or main developer. I'm not into trains, but I felt bad for this guy so I spent 15 minutes at his booth and let him show me everything. It seemed to have made his day.
- natas 3mo agoI bought it yesterday, not too hard to get running on linux, and played for an hour, it's immense fun.
- globular-toast 3mo agoWhat do you have to do to get it working on Linux? Is there a way to signal my hatred of Windows when I buy it?
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- Rebelgecko 3mo agoUsing the steam deck flavor of Linux, literally just buy the game, download it, and hit play. Runs pretty well
- kaycey2022 3mo agoJust install steam on Linux. I think nearly every windows game is playable now. Gaming was the only thing keeping me in windows. The irony is I think Linux gaming us only feasible because of the win32 target. Otherwise the user space in Linux afaik is still a poop show.
- zftnb666 3mo agoOne person made the best train sim. Meanwhile AAA studios need 400 people to make the same game twice.
- KellyCriterion 3mo agoincluding patches to make "it stable", and do not forget DLC additional updates!
- faizshah 3mo agoI think Elder Scrolls Oblivion was like 80 person core team and 4 years of development and New Vegas was like 70 person dev team and 2 years of development. But starfield, which was widely criticized by fans, was over 100 people and 8 years development. With the most common criticism from former devs being about the additional management structure and difficulty of communication. I can’t help but feel there is a lesson there for tech companies where engineering orgs for products are 200+ people when a 20-30 person startup is your top competitor in the vertical.
- samspot 3mo agoYou can also reduce team size by employing insane, life-destroying crunch time.
- derr1 3mo agoThis game is fantastic, it seems that Japanese train arcade / sims are having a renaissance at the moment. It works brilliantly with the Zuiki Mascon controller.
- KellyCriterion 3mo agoQ to the video in the middle of the article: Is THIS the in-game graphics of the game?? If Yes - just WOW!! How much AI did the person use?
- terekhindc 3mo ago[dead]