Story
After the events of Evening Train Crash II, where Toad broke Mario, along with several others, out of prison, the newly-freed prisoners needed to escape Limerick. Police had most roads out of the city still blocked, but the group managed to reach Limerick Colbert Railway Station. The station, though still busy, served fewer destinations than it once did, reducing the potential escape avenues. With everyone’s poor experiences on the railway network, Mario suggested catching a bus to safety, but Sigurd of Chalphy overruled him. The group was too large, and a train’s capacity was needed.. A 2600 Class Arrow railcar was undergoing maintenance in the nearby works, and it suddenly rolled into a platform. Locke Cole, who had helped Toad in the breakout, was the driver, and the escape plan was ready.
The plan was clear: keep travelling north, away from the major cities. While residents of the Kingdom of Baron, Domino City, and the United States of Eagleland chattered on about various developments, bad news begun to brew. Locke was navigating based off of a railway map printed over a century ago, and it was severely outdated. The Waterford, Limerick, and Western Railway’s line to Sligo, latterly known as the Western Railway Corridor, had fallen out of use decades ago! A rebuilding project only reached the town of Athenry, and everything beyond was highly dilapidated. As Sigurd and Locke fought over navigation, the brake was activated. However, the train didn’t slow.
It turns out road improvments had resulted in a bridge being demolished, and the Arrow was about to fall off the railway! With no time to waste, Sigurd gathered everyone who owned a mount, and started to race ahead to the next station to avoid a deadly crash. However, a gang of arsonists had taken over the town of Tuam, led by Alvis of Velthomer, who had a very long history with Sigurd. But Alvis didn’t typically commit wanton arson. Someone was giving him orders to make sure Mario and company did not pass. Who, and why?
Everyone on board the Arrow waited with bated breath, as the missing bridge over the N63 drew ever closer…
Information
Evening Train Crash III is the third installment of my Evening Train Crash series of one-chapter hacks, where random characters I like are thrown into a dangerous situation on or around the Irish railway network. It was a submission for the SRPG One-for-All Jam, hosted by Anarch16Sync. Overall, it came in fifth place out of six entries, with an average overall score of 2.5/5. The theme was “shattered empires”, which I decided to interpret as the decay of the old railway companies. However, the story here was especially phoned in, consisting of a few random skits in the opening cutscene, and a complete rush job of an ending.
Speaking of rushing, the entry was submitted unfinished with many severe bugs. The worst of them causes the chapter to become unwinnable if Ballyglunin Station (the village by the broken bridge) is visited before killing Toras the ballistician. As it so happens, this was the only romhack in the game jam: everything else was an SRPG Studio game. The only testing was verifying that the chapter was winnable, which it is.
The chapter itself is an escort mission: if the train falls off the tracks, it’s game over. Every character is mounted with Canto Plus, allowing for relatively fast-paced gameplay. Victory is earned when the train reaches the top of the map.
Project Status
Evening Train Crash III desperately needs a bugfix run to fix the many bugs and prevent simple softlocks. However, this chapter is still mediocre overall. Plenty of ideas were left on the cutting room floor due to time constraints. If I do fix the chapter up, I’ll probably reinstate some of them (Alvis is just there without explaination, so that should be fixed, for one example). But that’s a very big if.
Gallery
Downloads and Links
Latest release (26th Feburary 2024): Here
Itch.io project page: Here