Indie Spotlight: Locomoto Dashing Happy Train

How many times have you looked at Animal Crossing and felt like you could take over the train you came in on and do it better? Well in this game, you can tell  Rover to shut it, cuz in this furry land of wonder, I’m the conductor now and I demand new wallpapers!  Colors! Lights! Everything! With the diverse creation in Locomoto, one can make the train of their dreams, from the inside and out. The cutesy art style pops with the modules, the use of bright colors, and the pretty world around it. This same style is embedded in the character creation, offering lots of animalized bases.

Management of this train is down to you. As soon as you start the game, you are offered the chance to save your town and the environmental travesty it’s undergoing through the power of tourism and commerce. Which, really, what else do you need? Oh, a storyline? Locomoto has that in spades, picking up the passengers allows you to start doing quests for them, as well as just chatting about the lives they live and who they are as people. You can listen to them talk about their loved ones, or why they wanna go where, while serving them some snacks and drinks. Give me that lifelong wisdom!

You gotta grease up your elbows

Hey! No one said that running a train is easy work, right? You got to shovel in that coal, wipe the sweat off your tiny brow, pick that route, ohh don’t forget to wipe down that table, take those shiny tokens after you believe in recycling for mother earth, maybe swing that Axe leaning by your room onto your back, cut down some trees make some furniture, or pickaxe some ore to help get that color in the trim just right, you know, the basic conductor things- then you can set your route and off you go! When you are done riding, pick up a fishing pole and hang your best effort on the walls.

Worth a look

Locomoto made it onto our indie spotlight due to its simple, charming gameplay, storytelling, and design. It’s simple and fun, with nothing too stressful or boring. The game doesn’t try to be something that it’s not and is happy to be what it is, which really shows within the game itself. While price may be a little bit higher then one would expect for this kind of game, it’s still far lower then games like animal crossing which this is clearly inspired off of, and it makes it worth it with the peaceful delight of slowly unraveling a mystery and creating something new out of what you have been given. Just where is that breaking switch?