Fling your cargo!

Get your cargo across the desert! Be careful, bandits will rob you! Some will even be on FIRE! What will you sacrifice to fend them off? You decide!

Use your cash to purchase railcars. Railcars come with cargo. If you successfully haul cargo through a trip, you get some cash. But be careful! Bandits want to steal your cargo! So what can you do?

Throw your cargo!

That's right, your precious cargo can be used to fight off the bandits!

Throw the bandits!

If you're near the end of the train, or you need to stop a bandit from throwing a helpless passenger, just pick him up and toss him.

...but wait, what about fire!?

Would you look at that? Some bandits are on fire! They're tougher than usual, so your best bet might be picking him up and throwing him out as soon as possible. If not, he might set the whole car ablaze!

But he did, he set the whole car ablaze!

That's alright! If worst comes to worst, you can always pull a traincar spike to cut a car away! Hopefully he didn't set one ablaze that far up the train...


Controls

  • Control stick / arrow keys - move
  • A button / space bar - jump/interact
  • X button / F key - pick up/throw/cancel
  • F4 - fullscreen
  • Escape - end game

Tips and Tricks

  • Cargo's a pretty neat item. It can hurt enemies without being lost. It can put out fires. It isn't lost at the end of the round.
  • <more added soon>

Credits

Vinnie_V - programming

BaconBoy - graphics

Donuts - music

Also my friend Ethan screamed into the mic for some dying passengers, so thanks for that.

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  • BelowSeaLvL
    Lv. 7

    Super funny game, I enjoyed it really. The Western theme gives good vibes Control to pick up was a bit unclear at the beginning though. Great looking sprites, effects, music Missed the sacrifed part in a way it adds really something besides just dropping the the whole trail Overal still one of the best games in this jam and seems like something to build on. :)

    I would love a more indepth/polished version of this.

  • Scott Richards
    Lv. 21

    The the art and game feel was incredible and the theme was spot on. Unfortunately when fire is left unattended the game becomes unplayable with an increasing number of fire instances being spawned. Overall we enjoyed the game and concept.

  • Lucky Pixel
    Lv. 2

    The game is very well thought out! The music and pixel art is very appealing and goes well with the overall feel. It has a nice color palette. I like the animation for the characters and throwing mechanic. Maybe add a different type of bandit or perilous item to increase difficulty.

  • Problematicar
    Lv. 37

    Stunning game, the pixelart is awesome, and the music is really appropriate.

    I liked the idea, even though I think some things could've been changed, like the way the fire and bandits on fire works. In general I think that there shouldn't be unavoidable damage in games, so when I see that some bandits can put the train on fire without even coming down from the roof I can't help but think that the game is broken.

    I really liked the way the players selects the difficulty before starting the run, and you implemented it so smoothly aswell.

    Shelfless
    Submitted

    Shelfless

    • Vinnie_V
      Patron
      Vinnie_V Coder of Railcar Revenue

      6yrs ago

      Yeah, it has some balancing issues I would have liked to work out. It's possible to hop up on the roof and take care of the bandits that happen to stay up there! I left it as a mechanic for the player to discover, but I could have nudged a little harder in that direction, haha. You can also throw passengers from below to hit roof-bandits, if you feel like sacrificing.

      Thanks for playing! I'm glad you liked the module difficulty!

  • Jupiter Hadley
    Lv. 13

    Really fun game! I included it in my GM48: Sacrifice compilation video series, if you’d like to take a look. :) https://youtu.be/WwCrESwX77E

  • Fachewachewa
    Patron

    Visuals and audio a reaaaally good, but I just can't like this game. I tried but I find it kinda unplayable.

    On my first game, I could always launch bandits off the train betweed the first car and the locomotive, but since it only happend 2 or 3 times. I don't know if it's a bug or what, but that's really confusing, esp considering the fact that bandits can throw passengers off from anywhere.

    Cargo is basically useless because it takes so much time to lift, if you want to use it against fire, your FPS are going DOWN. Fire is also always spaning in the front, so if you have more than 2 cars and you're in the back throwing bandints, you're f'ed.

    Passengers also don't spawn in old wagons ? Are we supposed to ditch them between rounds ?

    I had a guy in fire staying on the roof of the train too once.

    And finally, the ultimate play seems to be : getting rid of old wagons and only taking one first class each round.. :(

    • Vinnie_V
      Patron
      Vinnie_V Coder of Railcar Revenue

      6yrs ago

      Yeah, I understand where you're coming from. I mentioned in an earlier comment that the game is more of a playground currently. There were also some last minute design changes I implemented in an effort to fix some gameplay problems (e.g. the bandits throwing from anywhere, they weren't all that much of a threat before). It needs more balancing too. I joked earlier I should have made it check for a balancing patch from a server, so I could tweak it afterwards haha.

      The fire randomly spawns from anywhere, but it's possible that either the guy kept running towards the front, or he just kept spawning up front. Either way, bad unchecked RNG. In the future I'd definitely choose to spawn him towards the back of the train to balance the flame mechanic a little better. Maybe always in the last car and then have him creep up.

      Not to mention, there needs to be better in-game explanation of mechanics (like with the passengers not respawning).

      I'm running out of room here, but I really appreciate the feedback!

  • LD Smith
    Lv. 9

    Interesting concept. Killing the bandits seemed to be a little too difficult by throwing passengers. Then I figured out that you can throw them off the back of the train. After about two stops, there was so much fire that it caused the game to slow down and it was no longer playable. Maybe reset the fire after each stop. I kept wanting to press Esc to exit the shop menu, which quit the game.

    • Vinnie_V
      Patron
      Vinnie_V Coder of Railcar Revenue

      6yrs ago

      Yeah, I'd rework throwing if I had a chance definitely. At the very least, add an indicator. The arches on the throws are made in such a way that you can throw passengers and hit guys on the roof as well, but it ends up being a bit of a guessing game in the end.

      I should have mentioned somewhere in the game, but the implication is that you are meant to either snuff out flames with cargo, or drop the train car to stop it from spreading.

      I also greatly underestimated the amount of people who would use escape to quit the shop screen, haha. I will definitely keep that in mind in the future.

      Thanks for playing!

  • Josiarthei
    Lv. 4

    Sound design on point. As was... everything else.

  • pmmj
    Lv. 2

    Very polished effort. The art was amazing and the soundtrack was very immersive. Loved the sound effects of both the picking up, the throwing and the screams. Especially the screams. The gameplay was fun and humorous, although it was much easier to just defend one car as it got extremely hectic with two or more. There is no end goal as well, but thats fine with the effort over 48 hours. Unfortunately you can throw some of the passengers into the red train and get them stuck forever inside the "furnace" or whatever platform. I don't know if they pay or not for the ride. As well, pulling pins sometimes just makes you fall into the abyss and you have to restart the ENTIRE game, which is mildly annoying to hair-pulling frustrating at times. I hope this game gets finished as it has tons of replay value, and we laughed a lot playing it. Hopefully multiplayer (fingers crossed)

    Can't wait to see whats next! Love it!

    Bloodgates
    Submitted

    Bloodgates

    • Vinnie_V
      Patron
      Vinnie_V Coder of Railcar Revenue

      6yrs ago

      Yeah, I should have provided more guidance on the spike pulling mechanic. You're supposed to hold a direction to decide which car you want to stay in after it gets pulled out. In hind sight, I probably should have pushed the player to one side or the other if they didn't make a choice.

      And yes, absolutely an end goal would help. We were originally gonna limit rounds to incentivize getting as long a train as possible, but some design changes towards the end took precedence.

      I'm glad you enjoyed it!

  • siridakis
    Lv. 7

    Very polished game.
    The fire thing came up too early for me :( and actually I really didn't get it, nothing was destroyed, the fire just kept spreading until I couldn't see anything and the framerate dropped a lot
    Other than that, I really liked the game idea and the sound and art are great!

    Kamikaze
    Submitted

    Kamikaze

    • Vinnie_V
      Patron
      Vinnie_V Coder of Railcar Revenue

      6yrs ago

      Yeah, I've discovered after time was done there's a bug that sometimes stops the fire from working (it's supposed to kill passengers if they touch it too long). Definitely a buzz kill.

      I'm glad you liked it though! Thanks for playing!

  • TheCalster
    Lv. 4

    Very impressive considering the time constraints! Seriously, the art, sound, mechanics, and polish of this game are admirable! Only issue I had was I wasn't sure about the consistency of the power of my throw. It seemed that sometimes the person I threw would barely go far at all, other times they would fly off the train. I got the feeling it had something to do with how far I moved whilst holding them? Maybe I just didn't understand that very well! Great job!

    Rain
    Submitted

    Rain

    • Vinnie_V
      Patron
      Vinnie_V Coder of Railcar Revenue

      6yrs ago

      Thank you! I'm glad you liked it!

      Yeah it's tied to the speed. The speed on the player can change pretty quickly though, so going forward, I'd definitely 1) add some kind of graphical indicator showing where your throw would be aimed at the current moment, and 2) smooth out the changes in throwing angle and power, so it wasn't locked with the quickly changing speed.

  • Veralos
    Lv. 38

    This feels super polished, especially for being made in such a short time. The graphics are fantastic, the music is great, and I love the sound effects when people get thrown off the train. There's some great details such as how the music gets quieter when you walk outside.

    The core mechanics are interesting, but the game really feels like it's missing a bit of balance and some sort of goal or progression. The best strategy seems to be to stick with one car and just throw bandits off the end. The only thing to do in the game is to get money to buy cars... to get more money to buy cars. However, I can certainly see this game having a lot of potential if it were explored further.

    • Vinnie_V
      Patron
      Vinnie_V Coder of Railcar Revenue

      6yrs ago

      Yeah, in it's current state it's more of a world (or rather, train) to play in. We talked about several ideas for progression but in the end, some design changes took precedence over it. And oh yes, it does need some balance. Maybe in the future I can have the games download balance patches from a server so I can tweak them after, muhahaha...

      Thanks for playing!

  • Tecna
    Lv. 10

    I loved this game! From music, voice acting and sound effects, to gameplay, art and mechanics, this surely is a great candidate to the Top 3 of this Game Jam. I only wished that the mechanic explanation in-game were more straightforward, answering questions as "why should I throw the passengers at the bandits?" or "why should I buy more cargo?".

    Your style reminded me of a consolidated game and it's impressive how you and your team achieved that in only 48 hours. Congratulations!

    • Vinnie_V
      Patron
      Vinnie_V Coder of Railcar Revenue

      6yrs ago

      Thank you! That means so much to hear!

      And yes, I totally agree. I created a tutorial object for the controls and exposition about half-way through the jam and just left it at that, not updating it or expanding it haha. I would have loved to make a better introduction sequence to this.

  • Kwis
    Lv. 67

    Well, pretty nice graphics and sounds! The game feels nice and cool! I like how you travel and like the sacrifice system of using the passengers. however, it felt more like a game of "i'll take a bandit and throw it away" because there is not real advantage of killing a passenger. Also, once you get enough money to get all the cars you want... You basically run out of things to do. Too bad, kinda lacked a goal there :/ Also the cargo luggage is kind of pointless cause it's way too heavy to carry so you're better off throwing bandits away again.

    Aside that, pretty impressive!

    Munchun
    Submitted

    Munchun

    • Vinnie_V
      Patron
      Vinnie_V Coder of Railcar Revenue

      6yrs ago

      Yeah, it's very lacking in end game. Maybe in an expanded version!

      Yeah, early on throwing bandits away is super op. It balances out a lot better the longer the train is.

      Luggage definitely needs tuned down on the weight some. The original idea was that it's used to stop fires and enemies, AND isn't lost between rounds if taken care of, so you could buy several and plan out their locations across multiple rounds. I tried to balance that out with a pretty heavy weight, but in retrospect, I nerfed it a bit too hard lol

      I'm glad you enjoyed playing!

  • SpaceMyFriend
    Lv. 15

    Hey this is great! Very nice use of the theme. That train looks super nice as well!

  • High five Machine
    Lv. 2

    Awesome! I really like the mechanic of passengers as weapons. Feels like there is a lot of polish here for a 48 hour game.

  • Adventure Byte
    Lv. 12

    This is such a great idea and it was fun to throw bandits off the train to hear them cry in terror! I enjoyed playing and I think the sounds and art were top notch. Nice work!

    The only bug I ran into happened when I pulled the main train car pin while it was on fire and I became trapped in the train car's hit box. Movement then worked left and right within the car but not out of it or by jumping.

    • Vinnie_V
      Patron
      Vinnie_V Coder of Railcar Revenue

      6yrs ago

      Yeah I'm not surprised you found some weird physics. I found a few bugs myself and couldn't iron them out in a timely manner, so I just kind of altered the hitboxes of things to hide some weirdness lol

      I'm glad you liked it!

  • SickPlasma
    Lv. 1

    I swear if this doesn't win

  • Tero Hannula
    Patron

    This was a good concept and nice pixel art. My game bugged, I had four carts and every one started to get aflame and there was so much flames on going that my game started to jam. In the end it dropped maybe to less than 5 fps. It was nice, but maybe carry people little bit faster? Throwring felt little bit awkward as you needed some speed I assume.

    • Vinnie_V
      Patron
      Vinnie_V Coder of Railcar Revenue

      6yrs ago

      Glad you liked it! Yeah, it isn't explained in the game very well (or at all really), but flames can only be put out through smothering with the cargo in the cargo carts. Otherwise the spike separating the cars has to be pulled to stop the fire from spreading. Five flaming cars sounds cool to see, I hadn't tested that out yet haha.

  • ibrahimshersha
    Lv. 3

    Good concept, art and music, excellent Game play mechanics.

  • Robert
    Lv. 7

    Lovely Graphics and well matched to the theme! Multiplayer could be so much fun for this!

    Oh and the sound done by human voices is ace!!

    • Vinnie_V
      Patron
      Vinnie_V Coder of Railcar Revenue

      6yrs ago

      I'm pretty sure we actually lost a lot of production time just laughing at the voices alone. I'm glad you liked it! Yes, multiplayer would be hilariously hectic!

  • Euxiac
    Lv. 4

    Love it, please finish it, I would love this game. Make a tycoon style train game where you travel ll over your country running trains xD

    I keep pressing ESC to go to the menu or backing out of the buy train selections. That exits the game and it's frustrating. Somewhat confused by the carts don't refill

    • Vinnie_V
      Patron
      Vinnie_V Coder of Railcar Revenue

      6yrs ago

      I'm glad you love it! That sounds like it would be pretty fun, a tycoon game like that!

      Yeah, it isn't explained in the game at all, but Escape ends it and F4 fullscreens the game. These used to be controls back from... I think GameMaker 8? I'm so used to them I always add them to every project lol. You're right, I would have liked more time to get navigating the menu down a little better, it's a bit clunky as-is.

  • Jmation
    Lv. 4

    Love the graphics!

    Constructive criticism

    -I felt a little far from the action and would love it even more if the view moved in closer. The animated gif on your page makes it feel more action packed, that's where I wanted to be.

    -Full screen mode would be good.

    -Text overlay was a little hard to read but that might have been because of the full screen mode.

    Other than that excellent work!

    • Vinnie_V
      Patron
      Vinnie_V Coder of Railcar Revenue

      6yrs ago

      Glad you liked the graphics!

      • Yeah, the camera I definitely wouldn't mind re-working. I had to play with it a little bit to stop from getting motion-sick while playing. Zooming in during fights might be cool to add.

      • It isn't mentioned anywhere in the game, but you can press F4 for fullscreen. So there's a lil' hidden secret.

      • Agreed. I was originally going to move most of the text to the blue sky area, but I never came back and fixed it.

      Thanks!