I always wonder how a solo developer can source high quality assets like these, plus develop a full game with them. In this case did the dev create the assets or did they purchase them from a freelancer? How much would purchasing this many assets cost?
Almost every time I see a halfway polished “solo developer” game, they did not do all the work themselves. Especially, they usually hire out the music, maybe other sounds, and much of the artwork. Sometimes they also have freelancers doing marketing and such. Sometimes even some paid help writing the software.
I highlight this not to bring those developers down, but because I think it’s important people understand how these things actually come to be, so they aren’t discouraged to try themselves by thinking they ought to actually be doing 100% of the work solo. That’s pretty rare.
Solo developer just means they developed the game themselves, not made it all themselves. I'm not sure how you could write what you wrote without that occurring to you.
Anecdote, but I recall my friend saying he worked on freelancing assets to some train game and showed me some pictures of the said game. Unless there are more of these in existence, I think it was this.
It wouldn't surprise me if Japan has its own market for train assets. There's a big community of train simulators! Go to the Kyoto or Tokyo train museums, they have dozens where you step into a replica of a train cab and then drive a photorealistic simulation (sometimes also just film) - the ex-keyboarder for Casiopeia runs a train simulation game company that makes those since the 90s (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minoru_Mukaiya). There are some Nintendo Switch train simulators like Densha de GO that are only available in Japan.
I'm sure there's a treasure trove of already-built high-quality assets of Japanese trains.
I was looking at the controller support and apparently there are game controllers designed to follow the layout of a train operations controller with the same two levers that you can see in game.
All journalism is terrible these days. They just want a catchy headline for the ad view and nothing else matters, including whether the headline is true or not.
I'm on the fence because I have a TSC-X controller and it's unclear if it's supported. Somebody on the forums posted a tool that converts generic joystick axes to keypresses, but not sure how well that works.
Another notable, if old, train simulator from Japan is OpenBVE. It was easy to model railroads on it. Many short Brazilian routes were/are modeled in OpenBVE. It is particularly convincing since it simulates well the typical lateral wobbling that metric trains are known for.
Not to dismiss the effort by dev, but all Unreal engine games look photoreal these days. My point is that photorealism does not show effort these days.
Most of the review is about the art assets, and I doubt the big ones (e.g. the trains themselves) are off-the-rack Unreal assets. An engine like Unreal 5 will cast your assets in harsh relief. Which is to say, if your game's assets look custom and look good in Unreal 5, it does indeed demonstrate effort and skill.
I never got the appeal for these sim games. From the screenshots, it looks like a beautiful game and I guess I could enjoy the visuals for an hour or 2.
But I don't see how it'd entertain me for hours on end. If someone here is into these sim games, what's the reason you keep going back to them?
The simple pleasure of a job well done, even if the job is completely imaginary, because my real job is complex and stupid.
Driving the train is a little technical, but not overwhelmingly so. You need to pay attention to the gradient, speed, train weight and rail slipperiness to brake with perfect accuracy every time you come to a station. Signalling is not overly complex but you can benefit from tabbing over to a reference sheet every so often (Ah, double flashing yellow means we’re on a diverging route ahead with a reduced turnout speed so I must brake soon). Learning the german safety systems (PZB and LZB) was interesting. Guiding a 3000t freight train down a mountain isn’t something that can be rushed, it forces you to slow down and be patient.
So relaxation mostly. I can launch the game, drive something somewhere for an hour or two, get some endorphins because I did it all right, etc.
I play Euro Truck Simulator 2 (ets) and its my happy place, its just zen, Sometimes i will have a plugin that will get me local radio stations and i will cruise through italy and greece listening to talk shows in languages i don't understand, sometimes i will do it listening to the rumble of the truck, and i switch off, and allow my thoughts to run free.
I've recently started getting into flight sims, and i'm looking for the same sort of thing with that (the only problem with ets is the graphics still looks like a 2013 game) and i think i will get there, its just i'm at the 'learning to fly' stage, and thats kinda difficult. Well, actually flying is surprisingly easy, landing is the tricky bit ;-)
Similar to you, I don't see the attraction of these sims.
I have a theory it is a mindfulness thing like many hobbies.
Think knitting or crochet or even building and running a model train set in the garage. These things aren't terribly hard once you learn the basics but you have to pay attention to various details over time and it allows you to tune out from the rest of the world when you want to.
After school I played countless hours of Euro Truck Simulator. It was an awesome escapism. Being a truck driver, driving through sun and snow, in different parts of Europe. Crazy drivers at night, needed to think quick in difficult situations.
For the same reason that the Vegas attraction “dig a bunch of holes with industrial diggers” was so popular: people want to do jobs they think are cool without years of training cost up front, and this is a way for them to do so.
Farming simulator and Car mechanic simulator are both in my todo list, because those are hobbies I’m truly interested in pursuing and I’d like to know what it’s like to do them as a sim first. Most other live sims like this are deeply uninteresting to me, even if they have lovely visuals. Meanwhile I’ve seriously considered buying a Renesas SH-2A simulator for nearly $3k so that I can develop better car software!
Is there some job you’ve always wanted to do that requires extensive training that you can’t / won’t complete at this time? That would be a use case for sims that’s less game and more hobby for you (but that’s always a blurry line for all of us so don’t take that as criticism).
I started playing Farm Simulator 2025 recently because a friend wanted me to. Even now, I really long for a proper game with progression, etc. But it's really just a way to drive machines.
And I find myself wanting to do that, even without the progression I crave from a game. But then I also feel like I'm massively wasting my time, and I could be playing other games, getting stuff done around the house, or just reading a book. Instead of driving a tractor for no freaking reason. But I still want to do it.
Have you ever wanted to try flying a plane or running a city or being a tycoon of roller coasters without having to invest much time, money, and energy to take flight lessons, run for political office, or work your way up through an amusement park company? Sim games let you play with these complex systems easily and walk away when you get bored.
I get the impression he's not saying all sim games, but "drive the vehicle" sims in general. I have to agree. There's just nothing engaging about it imo.
I have never played any train sim, but I read video game press that this one hits different.
A lot of train sim are about building the rail network, where Running Train focuses on driving. The scenery (dozens of kilometers of japanese railway) is beautiful and it reproduces the japanese railway system realistically.
"Played properly, Running Train asks you to carefully control your speed, braking, and prompt, safe arrival at train stations, and rewards or penalizes you accordingly"
So it's basically a clone of 'Densha de go!' series.
A full-scale arcade version in this genre, evolving since 1996. Realistic controls, some seem even to include train crew uniforms you can wear while driving…
If the Touhou games or Cave Story were released today, all of Hackernews would be like "dude, I wonder what their LLM workflow is like!" Japanese solo hikikomori devs have been putting out insane stuff since long before LLMs emerged.
Not really, those games are very simple code wise. A high schooler could do it (source me).
You could make a bullet hell game engine as a project in an intro CS course.
The hard part is the content in the game, and ZUN was already a composer. That just leaves the code which is easy, and the bullet patterns, which ZUN clearly improved at through his earlier games. (and the art, which is famously bad though endearing)
Am I the only one that thinks the word "pretty" is overused to describe the visual quality and artistry of games? I see this word thrown around often and it feels so low-effort.
I have almost no appreciation for trains and I’m incredibly interested in trying this.
I always wonder how a solo developer can source high quality assets like these, plus develop a full game with them. In this case did the dev create the assets or did they purchase them from a freelancer? How much would purchasing this many assets cost?
Almost every time I see a halfway polished “solo developer” game, they did not do all the work themselves. Especially, they usually hire out the music, maybe other sounds, and much of the artwork. Sometimes they also have freelancers doing marketing and such. Sometimes even some paid help writing the software.
I highlight this not to bring those developers down, but because I think it’s important people understand how these things actually come to be, so they aren’t discouraged to try themselves by thinking they ought to actually be doing 100% of the work solo. That’s pretty rare.
Solo developer just means they developed the game themselves, not made it all themselves. I'm not sure how you could write what you wrote without that occurring to you.
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Anecdote, but I recall my friend saying he worked on freelancing assets to some train game and showed me some pictures of the said game. Unless there are more of these in existence, I think it was this.
Please tell him thank you from us all :)
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It wouldn't surprise me if Japan has its own market for train assets. There's a big community of train simulators! Go to the Kyoto or Tokyo train museums, they have dozens where you step into a replica of a train cab and then drive a photorealistic simulation (sometimes also just film) - the ex-keyboarder for Casiopeia runs a train simulation game company that makes those since the 90s (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minoru_Mukaiya). There are some Nintendo Switch train simulators like Densha de GO that are only available in Japan.
I'm sure there's a treasure trove of already-built high-quality assets of Japanese trains.
I was looking at the controller support and apparently there are game controllers designed to follow the layout of a train operations controller with the same two levers that you can see in game.
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I thought it was kind of commoditised these days - there's an Unreal asset store I think? Probably one for Unity as well.
Game looks amazing from a solo dev but this article is terrible, like the journo didn't even play the game they just watched the game.
All journalism is terrible these days. They just want a catchy headline for the ad view and nothing else matters, including whether the headline is true or not.
> including support for the Zuiki MASCON, a bespoke peripheral for train driving sims.
This just makes me feel so glad to be alive today!
Yeah, love that is just works.
I'm working on a bit of a hobby project to rebuild a beefier Mascon. Mainly inspired by how much I enjoyed Running Train
I'm on the fence because I have a TSC-X controller and it's unclear if it's supported. Somebody on the forums posted a tool that converts generic joystick axes to keypresses, but not sure how well that works.
"Somebody on the forums posted a tool that converts generic joystick axes to keypresses, but not sure how well that works."
Joy2Key has been a staple for many a gamer for a while, and reliable. I've used it to control my mouse, even, from my gamepad.
The game in question is https://store.steampowered.com/app/4630570/RUNNING_TRAIN/
Link added to toptext. Thanks!
Another notable, if old, train simulator from Japan is OpenBVE. It was easy to model railroads on it. Many short Brazilian routes were/are modeled in OpenBVE. It is particularly convincing since it simulates well the typical lateral wobbling that metric trains are known for.
This is a 1 person job?! It looks practically photorealistic. That's absolutely wild.
Not to dismiss the effort by dev, but all Unreal engine games look photoreal these days. My point is that photorealism does not show effort these days.
Most of the review is about the art assets, and I doubt the big ones (e.g. the trains themselves) are off-the-rack Unreal assets. An engine like Unreal 5 will cast your assets in harsh relief. Which is to say, if your game's assets look custom and look good in Unreal 5, it does indeed demonstrate effort and skill.
No engine in the world can make bad assets look good.
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Oh wow, I didn't know engines provided that much functionality. Thank you.
I never got the appeal for these sim games. From the screenshots, it looks like a beautiful game and I guess I could enjoy the visuals for an hour or 2.
But I don't see how it'd entertain me for hours on end. If someone here is into these sim games, what's the reason you keep going back to them?
The simple pleasure of a job well done, even if the job is completely imaginary, because my real job is complex and stupid.
Driving the train is a little technical, but not overwhelmingly so. You need to pay attention to the gradient, speed, train weight and rail slipperiness to brake with perfect accuracy every time you come to a station. Signalling is not overly complex but you can benefit from tabbing over to a reference sheet every so often (Ah, double flashing yellow means we’re on a diverging route ahead with a reduced turnout speed so I must brake soon). Learning the german safety systems (PZB and LZB) was interesting. Guiding a 3000t freight train down a mountain isn’t something that can be rushed, it forces you to slow down and be patient.
So relaxation mostly. I can launch the game, drive something somewhere for an hour or two, get some endorphins because I did it all right, etc.
for me its the abilty to 'switch off'
I play Euro Truck Simulator 2 (ets) and its my happy place, its just zen, Sometimes i will have a plugin that will get me local radio stations and i will cruise through italy and greece listening to talk shows in languages i don't understand, sometimes i will do it listening to the rumble of the truck, and i switch off, and allow my thoughts to run free.
I've recently started getting into flight sims, and i'm looking for the same sort of thing with that (the only problem with ets is the graphics still looks like a 2013 game) and i think i will get there, its just i'm at the 'learning to fly' stage, and thats kinda difficult. Well, actually flying is surprisingly easy, landing is the tricky bit ;-)
Similar to you, I don't see the attraction of these sims.
I have a theory it is a mindfulness thing like many hobbies.
Think knitting or crochet or even building and running a model train set in the garage. These things aren't terribly hard once you learn the basics but you have to pay attention to various details over time and it allows you to tune out from the rest of the world when you want to.
But I really don't know.
After school I played countless hours of Euro Truck Simulator. It was an awesome escapism. Being a truck driver, driving through sun and snow, in different parts of Europe. Crazy drivers at night, needed to think quick in difficult situations.
For the same reason that the Vegas attraction “dig a bunch of holes with industrial diggers” was so popular: people want to do jobs they think are cool without years of training cost up front, and this is a way for them to do so.
Farming simulator and Car mechanic simulator are both in my todo list, because those are hobbies I’m truly interested in pursuing and I’d like to know what it’s like to do them as a sim first. Most other live sims like this are deeply uninteresting to me, even if they have lovely visuals. Meanwhile I’ve seriously considered buying a Renesas SH-2A simulator for nearly $3k so that I can develop better car software!
Is there some job you’ve always wanted to do that requires extensive training that you can’t / won’t complete at this time? That would be a use case for sims that’s less game and more hobby for you (but that’s always a blurry line for all of us so don’t take that as criticism).
I started playing Farm Simulator 2025 recently because a friend wanted me to. Even now, I really long for a proper game with progression, etc. But it's really just a way to drive machines.
And I find myself wanting to do that, even without the progression I crave from a game. But then I also feel like I'm massively wasting my time, and I could be playing other games, getting stuff done around the house, or just reading a book. Instead of driving a tractor for no freaking reason. But I still want to do it.
What would progression look like in a farming simulator? I tried it a few times but have had a similar feeling.
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Have you ever wanted to try flying a plane or running a city or being a tycoon of roller coasters without having to invest much time, money, and energy to take flight lessons, run for political office, or work your way up through an amusement park company? Sim games let you play with these complex systems easily and walk away when you get bored.
I get the impression he's not saying all sim games, but "drive the vehicle" sims in general. I have to agree. There's just nothing engaging about it imo.
I have never played any train sim, but I read video game press that this one hits different.
A lot of train sim are about building the rail network, where Running Train focuses on driving. The scenery (dozens of kilometers of japanese railway) is beautiful and it reproduces the japanese railway system realistically.
Japan has a history of train-driving sims: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Train_simulator#Driving_simula...
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An hour or two of entertainment for $19.99 isn't outrageous these days. A trip to the movie theater can easily cost more.
I like this comparison. That’s a good way to think about it.
"I could enjoy", "How it'd entertain me" - have you even tried a few?
I tried a “cleaning sim”. I already forgot the name but it was just like doing chores with a pressure cleaner.
Have not tried the train / driving sim though.
Escapism fun. Being able to do the fun parts of something without the bullshit of doing it for real.
If you fall asleep while playing Truck Simulator, nobody dies.
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I wonder if it's got VR. There's not many train Sims that do even though the sim community in general has really embraced VR.
It works great with UEVR, there's a discussion post in the steam forum on how to set that up. It plays really nicely in VR.
Not yet. It's been asked but since the original dev is doing all the work, he has to prioritize the backlog.
Oh ok I'll still try it out though. But hopefully it'll come one day
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"Played properly, Running Train asks you to carefully control your speed, braking, and prompt, safe arrival at train stations, and rewards or penalizes you accordingly"
So it's basically a clone of 'Densha de go!' series.
For the uninitiated:
https://www.popularmechanics.com/culture/gaming/a28954/new-j...
A full-scale arcade version in this genre, evolving since 1996. Realistic controls, some seem even to include train crew uniforms you can wear while driving…
Windows only? :-(
Nowadays most games will run on Linux thanks to Valve's Proton compatibility layer.
"most" is doing a lot of work in that sentence.
Multiplayer games generally don't.
Haven't tried this one yet, but in my experience it's like 90% of single player games work and the remaining 10% will never work.
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2026 Steam hardware survey [1]:
[1] Click the "OS Version" row to expand the table, https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Softw...
Something of a self-reinforcing statistic. Steam is rarely installed on Mac because there’s hardly any point doing so.
Windows versions running on Linux over Proton tend to be more stable than any native Linux version would be.
It’s beautiful. I wonder how much an LLM was involved if at all.
If the Touhou games or Cave Story were released today, all of Hackernews would be like "dude, I wonder what their LLM workflow is like!" Japanese solo hikikomori devs have been putting out insane stuff since long before LLMs emerged.
This place has become an AI-focused hellscape. It really is sad.
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Not really, those games are very simple code wise. A high schooler could do it (source me).
You could make a bullet hell game engine as a project in an intro CS course.
The hard part is the content in the game, and ZUN was already a composer. That just leaves the code which is easy, and the bullet patterns, which ZUN clearly improved at through his earlier games. (and the art, which is famously bad though endearing)
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the (physical) zuiki mascon seems like a labor of love too.
I’m wondering the same thing. I’ve been thinking about getting into solo LLM game dev. I don’t know the first thing about it
You’re all set!
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I'd be happy to help you! I'm working on a game myself.
My first piece of advice is: Pick one mechanic or idea, and ship it all the way to a player (a friend) to see if it's legible or fun.
Step 1: acquire land for datacenter.
[flagged]
I wish this was true. That AI slop couldn't reach prod and polute our virtual stores and assets marketplaces.
Pretty much nothing has shipped without LLM involvement over the last 6-12 months
>And oh my goodness, it’s so pretty.
Am I the only one that thinks the word "pretty" is overused to describe the visual quality and artistry of games? I see this word thrown around often and it feels so low-effort.
It's a simple word that does the job. No need to overthink it.