This Lovecraftian RPG Has You Scrambling to Feed Your Train

While I was scrolling through a list of new games being released, one stuck out to me and seemed incredibly interesting, so I clicked on it to discover one of the most underrated yet promising RPGs. Railgods of Hysterra is a lovecraftian base-building RPG, or in regular terms, it is a fantasy horror game where you expand your base and explore the world for resources, meeting new characters and fighting enemies along the way. The game is currently in public early access, meaning the game is still being developed, but is accessible to the public. When you first press play, a long cutscene will start, in which you learn that H. P. Lovecraft, the horror author that heavily influenced this style of games, is a real character in this game, and even more, all of his creations are reality. I played it very briefly and didn’t really get far due to time constraints, but in my brief experience with the game I realized how much potential it has.

The game starts off with a brief, but straightforward tutorial section where you learn basic mechanics, such as how blueprints work or how to move your camera after which you exit the cave where you spawned and have to explore to progress. You kill some enemies, pick up their loot, and eventually find your Railgod, a huge train with the leading car looking like the head of a terrifying creature. 

You learn that in order to power your Railgod, you must feed it what the game calls “earthling mush” as fuel, and that way it can take you to new places, at which you can explore, but you should be very careful when fighting enemies, of which there will be many. If I discussed any more of the plot, it would be spoiling the story, so let's move on to player reception.

Considering the fact that this is in early access, the game holds a lot of promise in its story, combat, and the whole train-feeding mechanic. Some critics, such as Harrison Abbot at Bloody Disgusting!, criticize some of the base building mechanics, with Abbot stating that “You might find yourself needing to stockpile an inordinate amount of resources just to build a workbench of a specific tier that then, in turn, allows you to craft a key piece of equipment, but not before you’ve researched its blueprint over at another station first. The end result is a lot of faffing around and waiting for queued actions to be completed.” In that quote, Abbot specifically talks about the tedium that is waiting for queued actions to be completed, which also stained my short experience with the game.

Nevertheless, the game is currently in early access, and one of the purposes of a public early access is to get feedback, so it is good that the game is getting criticized for its weak points. As of writing this article, the game has already released five hotfix updates, so clearly the developers care about the community. On the steam page, the developers posted a roadmap that explains the schedule of the major updates and the full release of the game.

Railgods of Hysterra might be one of the most underrated games set to release soon, and while some aspects of the game may negatively impact the experience, it is still extremely promising. Also, this is only the early access, so one can only imagine what the full version will look like.