One of this year Summer Uprising games that stands out from the crowd of games that generally either feature death of some sort or trying to get somewhere fast is Train Frontier Express. While train simulators are nothing to gaming, they are usually PC-based and prohibitively expensive unless you are a die-hard train addict who is replacing collection Lionels with $20 polygons.Train Frontier Express is essentially a giant sandbox in which you can make your model railroad how you want it, the way you want it, all from the comfort of your couch. It’s not mentioned in the interview as this just came around a few days ago but now the game will feature multiplayer options allowing friends to share their railroads with each other and more, hear more about the update here.Today I sit down with Eric, half of the two-man team over at Team Train Frontier.
Well first off, it is mentioned in your bio that you are a two-man team that met while working on a AAA action title. Sounds like there’s a story to be told there!

Haha, I wish. Game development definitely isn’t very glamorous. Staring at the same action sequences over and over gets boring. Most of our interesting stories are dirty laundry, and we don’t want to air it out publicly!


What was the initial spark that evolved into what is now Train Frontier?

The decision to make it a train sim happened fairly quickly. I joked that someone should make a train sim, and then seriously offered to do the project with Emoks a few weeks later. We thought we could probably beat most of the hastily and shoddily done games, in quality at least. Train sims are a fairly rare and niche genre, and besides some rare Japanese releases it had never really been exposed to the console crowd. So TFE is our experiment with XBLIG, XNA, and train sims on consoles.

Will the game have any kind of optional quest stuff, “challenges” and things like that?

Currently, our game is focused on being a world building sandbox, model train style. There’s the possibility of earning badges, which are like achievement riddles. We just added online play, to share maps and ride with friends. The train sim community on PC actually organizes their own roleplay sessions through voice chat. I hope to see them trying it out in our game, since everything is built in already.

We’ve been thinking up more traditional gameplay ideas since beginning, and kind of settled on a Crazy Taxi and Railroad Tycoon hybrid, but decided to hold off on releasing with it. A lot of the code for it is already done, but without polish, we feel it’d detract from the rest of the game. There’s a small secret in our game that plays off of it.

If the situation were to occur, such as Eric decides he REALLY would like having a Union Pacific Big Boy to play with in the game, do you plan on putting in new content in the future via updates or cache them away for Train Frontier 2?

We have an update planned already with some extra features. Depending on how well the game does, we might do a sequel and add some gameplay changes.

I really like the fact that you two have developed this game specifically to replicate the fun of MODEL railroading instead of marketing to the crowd that actually know the designations of current trains and like sitting in a cab doing nothing for half an hour. Were you guys into model railroading as kids or did the concept in general just catch your eyes later on?

I played with a toy train set at my grandparents house when visiting, and always went to see the large model railroad displays at the county fair. I loved building things as a kid and recreating scenes from movies and shows.

However, our decision to make TFE a “model” train sim was due to other factors. Emoks and I are gamers, first and foremost, but train sims are quite inaccessible due to time and knowledge factors. It’s been our goal from the start to make a game for everyone to play, so we wanted our game to evoke playfulness. One of our playtesters noticed a Simcity Urban Renewal Kit similarity in our game. It so happens that Will Wright has been a huge inspiration — he’s opened up sim games to a rainbow spectrum of players.

Do either of the E’s have a specific favorite locomotive out of any others.

I actually prefer modern trains, and like the 500 Series Shinkansen, so our bullet train gets my vote. I’m huge public transportation fan, but our public transport system is so terrible here in California. I’m looking forward to our future high-speed rail system. We actually have a badge poking fun at our freeway system, since I’m a Los Angeles native. Emoks likes streamliners.

Are there any plans to possibly port this game to PC in the future?

I’d certainly like there to be a release on PC, but we’d need to work out distribution details first. Any future versions will be cross-platform from the get go.

I like to ask any Indie dev I interview this question but I have a feeling that since you’ve been in the industry a while the fix is in: Do you openly admit to being game developers or do you hide it behind a veil of “software design”, or just flat-out keep it secret?

I’m a professional indie game developer for as long as it lasts me. When I meet new people, I usually say I’m a freelance software engineer to make things easier, but what I do isn’t actually a secret. Emoks just says he’s in software development.

How long as Train Frontier Express been in development? The polished UI and pop-art graphics really pop in a sea of 2D pixel-based zombie shooters and Avatar-based games.

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