I’ve discovered my excellent summer time sport: A stomach-churning horror story about Czech practice conductors constructed over a bafflingly deep simulation of a fictional subway

I’ve developed a little bit of a popularity amongst my coworkers for loving area of interest, lo-fi indie video games that make you are feeling unhealthy and gross and peculiar on the within. I am flattered to face out in such a approach, however I additionally do not ever wish to be typecast. Anyway, Brno Transit is a sport about being trapped underground along with your nasty, weirdly sexual boss and neurotic coworkers as actuality disintegrates round you.

I beloved developer Spytihněv’s earlier sport, the Soviet boomer shooter Hrot, so I have been eagerly awaiting his subsequent undertaking. Very like fellow FPS designer David Szymanski (Nightfall, Iron Lung), Spytihněv zigged relatively than zagging, following up Hrot with a brief narrative horror sport relatively than one other shooter.

You are a novice practice conductor studying the ropes underneath Brno, the second metropolis of the Czech Republic. It is “the dampest subway east of something that issues,” in line with Spytihněv, and I feel it helps set the tone out of the gate to know that Brno doesn’t have a subway system in actual life.

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What follows is a surreal, scatological (a Spytihněv signature), and homoerotic (that is new!) delve into guys being dudes on the job. For me, it referred to as to thoughts Szymanski’s Iron Lung (however extra fleshy, sexual, and human) or 2024’s breakout Mouthwashing (however not as character pushed, and one way or the other even much less life-affirming). The controversial Horses additionally sprang to thoughts, however with much less explicitly harrowing subject material⁠—and extra specific full-frontal nudity, let’s go boys.

Much more than Mouthwashing, which portrays probably the most evil fictional workplaces I’ve ever seen, Brno Transit captured the sensation of beginning a job the place you matter so little as to wish to die, whereas the apathy and neglect of your coworkers is one way or the other even worse than in the event that they actively hated you.

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This sport runs on shock, so I will attempt to discuss round the actual zinger moments, however it’s one lengthy sequence of “Go right here, do that. Why did you try this? Now you must repair it. Embarrassing.” Should you’ve ever talked to a coworker at a shit job and felt like they have been an area alien taking part in a prank on you with how they assume and consider the world, Brno Transit will communicate to you on some degree.

Your first day ends with you consuming a tainted sizzling canine that offers you the runs and the voms, sending you scrambling for a loo as gurgles and whines fill your headphones. The doorless, uncovered bathroom within the worker space is indefinitely occupied if you attain it, whereas the lavatory within the station above is out of order. I do not know if there’s one other approach of ending this bit, however I needed to take the practice to a different station to search out an open commode. I have never shared this precise stress dream or degree of gastrointestinal misery, however it was nonetheless extremely gnarly and relatable within the second.

You black out and get up on a unclean ground mattress within the conductors’ space, with splotches of feces and a path of brown footprints trailing backwards out of your resting place. Out within the depot, a complete practice is roofed in crap, and the primary order of the day is to hose it off, Powerwash Simulator-style. How might this have all been you?

Occasions solely get stranger and grosser from there, and I used to be hooked. Brno Transit shares a brown, desolate, hopeless world with the previous Hrot, regardless of being set nearer to the fashionable day. It is a new standout of the mundane or on the job horror subgenre. I would like these terrible subway stations to get love just like the Backrooms or Exit 8.

Mannequin trains

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Brno Transit is a medley of nastiness punctuated with surreal hilarity, and whereas a lot of the humor is front-and-center within the scripted story, considered one of my favourite moments was emergent: I needed to do a double take out of the nook of my eye to note a passenger randomly hanging off the top of a practice because it left the station. The simulated little world of Brno Transit, which exists whether or not you are listening to it or not, is what actually takes it to the subsequent degree.

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Undergirding the scripted story stuff is a steady simulation of a small subway system with two traces, one counter- and the opposite clockwise. It looks like zooming into somebody’s mannequin practice set, and does an outstanding job of evoking a a lot bigger world than what’s simply in entrance of you.

A various array of NPCs mill concerning the stations or wander on and off the trains. They’ve this sense of anonymity and guarded hostility that actually nailed the sensation of constructing eye contact with strangers on the subway⁠. You do not matter to them, do not hassle them.

This impact, plus the the shifting and jostling of the practice vehicles, the way in which the lighting adjustments as you cross by tunnels, in addition to Spytihněv’s wonderful sound, music, and foley work add as much as this uncanny really feel of truly driving the subway. I used to be reminded of how nobody’s accomplished nighttime higher than Thief or Thief 2, even with their aged graphics. These three video games are punching effectively above their weight in artwork and environment.

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It’s important to experience the practice to start out, however you shortly take management of your personal engine, fastidiously adjusting your acceleration to keep away from hitting stops too late or too early, doing all your greatest to fit seamlessly into the pre-existing schedule of trains continuously working on this loop. It is a simplified approximation of a whole-hog practice sim like Densha de Go!

A free experience mode unlocks after finishing the story, and I really feel like there’s every kind of weirdness left to find underneath Brno. At one level within the story, I stumbled right into a skull-filled catacomb hooked up to one of many stations, with unnerving music, a complicated, switchback structure, and a bumbling vacationer snapping images. I assumed for certain this was a part of the important path, however it was simply there. What different odd shit is ready for me in any respect the stops I by no means explored on the important path?

Brno Transit would have been a straightforward suggestion for me at $9 if it was simply the standout surreal horror narrative journey, however the truth that it is constructed on high of this little mannequin practice world really units it aside. I like this freaky little sport, I like a Spytihněv joint, and I am unable to wait to see what he does subsequent.