End of the Line: Journey through the Apocalypse Tunnel

End of the Line follows the story of the last train carrying brave souls journeying through a post-apocalyptic world ravaged by disease, where humans have turned into flesh-eating monsters. Players' mission is to traverse through desolate cities, scavenge for resources to reach the last vaccine production facility in the world... all encapsulated in the journey of a decrepit old train from the Stone Age.

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Unstable Journey

End of the Line draws considerable inspiration from the popular game This War of Mine; you'll notice many similarities in gameplay and visuals between them.

Pandemic Train's gameplay combines role-playing, action, survival, and simulation. It's divided into 2 distinct phases: building and managing personnel on the train, followed by venturing out to scavenge for supplies. You'll control the main characters called leaders, who are the primary combat forces and will frequently venture out into the field. There are numerous leaders in the game, each with their own unique skills, such as using sniper rifles, crafting explosives, brewing poison, and even stealth assassins specializing in close combat.

Aside from leaders, other characters in Pandemic Train play support roles, each with different stats for crafting medicine, cooking, or repair. Depending on their stats, tasks will be completed quickly or slowly. Actions on the train consume AP (Action Points), with support characters having 2 AP while leaders only have 1, so you'll need to carefully plan each task assignment.

Pandemic Train's combat system is quite interesting, resembling a top-down shooter. You'll select 2 leaders for each field excursion, with the most common weapons in the post-apocalyptic world being guns. The game adds realism by offering 2 shooting styles: no-aim rapid fire with low damage, or aiming for high damage with the possibility of critical hits but sacrificing mobility and time.

As mentioned earlier, each leader has unique skills, depending on the player's preferences and style. If you don't like using guns, you can opt for close combat fights, but of course, nobody goes into battle with both a gun and a knife, close combat here means becoming an assassin. If you can sneak up from behind without being detected by enemies, then just a knife is enough to one-hit any prey.

Additionally, there are plenty of gadgets from Molotov cocktails to traps, as well as various types of guns depending on each leader. Therefore, gamers will definitely want to try out all these characters to creatively craft their own unique gameplay style.

In parallel with scavenging for items outside, upgrading the train is also crucial. Resources in Pandemic Train are extremely scarce and follow a barter system. For instance, to raise chickens, you need grains, which can be grown in greenhouses if there's water, and finally, water can be purified from irradiated sources, or directly 'regenerated' from within the characters.

Similar to This War of Mine, the characters in Pandemic Train also face their own issues, conflicts during movement, desires for a good meal, or side quests to find lost comrades. Players will decide whether to address their personal conflicts or ignore them to save time. Each decision will affect the characters' moods, leading to many unpredictable factors.

The visuals in Pandemic Train unfortunately only reach a mediocre level. Although it follows a fairly typical Eastern European style, it fails to fully portray the brutality of the post-apocalyptic world, with few small details. While there are some quite horrifying random occurrences like trading items with raw meat or leftover experiments... overall, it doesn't evoke the profound feeling of This War of Mine, although if you pay close attention, you'll notice that Pandemic Train draws a lot of visual inspiration from This War of Mine.

A Great Game with Some Shortcomings

Fundamentally, Pandemic Train can be seen as a , it encompasses all the elements of role-playing, management, simulation, and survival cleverly intertwined, but it seems like the developers were too ambitious in cramming them onto a small train, resulting in quite a few flaws. Firstly, the building and personnel management system, it's evident that Pandemic Train draws a lot of inspiration from This War of Mine, especially in terms of resource balancing, with the construction materials being too scarce.

If you want to build and upgrade everything on the train, you'll have to replay quite a lot, unnecessarily prolonging the game, as there's almost no way to earn more unless you go farming outside the map. The use of AP for characters also complicates things for players, as most food or weapons have to be crafted directly, rather than growing over time, so towards the end game after every mission, you'll find yourself running out of AP very quickly.

Pandemic Train's combat system is relatively good as it allows players multiple approaches, however, the camera angle is insufficient for gameplay. For instance, when you want to use a sniper rifle to shoot enemies from afar, you can't freely manipulate the camera, but instead have to approach the target to see and shoot, similarly with things like Molotov cocktails or traps, it somewhat reduces strategic depth. Repetitive enemies are also an issue, initially, they're interesting but as you progress, they start to become dull, as you'll encounter the same characters over and over again.

Small details like footsteps, visibility, or close combat strikes haven't been meticulously crafted. Ideally, Pandemic Train could make them more detailed, allowing players to fully utilize all main characters. Ultimately, the simplest approach is still to wield a gun and shoot directly, to be precise, the game lacks enough content for full replayability, the initial few hours of experience will be great with excitement, but it will quickly become boring because everything repeats like that.

Finally, although Pandemic Train has learned a lot from This War of Mine, what it lacks is the randomness in character interactions. Most events in the game are quite bland, mainly affecting stats or resource loss, rather than presenting moral choices or significant sacrifices like This War of Mine, making it difficult for gamers to feel the intensity of the post-apocalyptic world where humans eat each other to survive as the game intends to convey.

Interim Conclusion

Despite its imperfections, Pandemic Train is still a great game for those who love survival role-playing genres, the developers are also very receptive to feedback as they constantly release timely patches, so Pandemic Train still has a lot of room for development.