26 Sep 2023Developer postOriginal post (opens in a new tab)

Dev Diary #4: Worldbuilding in Last Train Home

Fellow Legionaries,

Welcome to our fourth Dev Diary, granting you an exclusive peek behind the curtains of the creating process of Last Train Home - a survival strategy game inspired by real events. In this Dev Diary, we shall delve into the intricacies of the game's worldbuilding.

Step Into the World

In Last Train Home, you embark on the desperate journey of Czechoslovak Legionaries returning home after World War I on board an armored train. You'll be immersed in a rugged and sparsely populated world only slightly affected by human intervention. You'll pass mainly villages and small towns surrounded by fields and cities that have yet to embrace heavy industrialization.

The territory is divided into very different biomes. In the west, you'll be greeted by lush, verdant landscapes and even sunflower fields, a sight to behold. As you venture eastward, however, the scenery turns increasingly hostile, with resilient vegetation, such as larches or firs, dominating the landscape. With each kilometer you traverse, the struggle for survival intensifies, and the environment mirrors this growing challenge.

It's crucial to emphasize that every map and view in the game is handcrafted; nothing is automatically generated. Moreover, quality and quantity go hand in hand, as the average journey on board Last Train Home spans a gripping 40 hours.

Diligent Research

Given that Last Train Home takes inspiration from historical events, our Level Designers and Artists embarked on an extensive research expedition to recreate a realistic in-game world.

They discovered the historical train tracks within Russian territory during that era, meticulously documenting the surroundings, including the types of vegetation that thrived in the extensive area. The team also uncovered the original names of cities and villages along the railway, in addition to delving into the period's industry, agriculture, construction materials, or architectural styles.

Drawing from this wealth of information, our Level Designers crafted a prototype of the fictional journey undertaken by Last Train Home while the Art Department breathed life into a visually stunning rendition of this world.

Different types of views

Last Train Home uniquely combines real-time strategy missions and train management. Thus, we constructed both the world in the missions and the world through which the train travels. In addition to the Mission View, you'll have two other perspectives at your disposal for train management between missions: Train View and Map View.

The Train View offers an up-close, zoomed-in perspective, allowing you to observe and manage individual train cars and crew members.

On the contrary, the Map View presents a zoomed-out view, enabling you to explore the expansive world and deploy your squad to various Points of Interest. This view was modeled after reality, with satellite images as our primary reference.

Naturally, some adjustments were made, particularly regarding the scale of objects lining the tracks. In the initial iteration, the landscape closely mirrored the original imagery, resulting in miniature hills and trees. Our goal was for the Map View to evoke the sensation of a hot air balloon ride, offering a detailed view of the landscape, so the scale needed to be adjusted.

Missions

Our missions, while rooted in reality to a degree, were designed with a touch of creative liberty. The aim was to capture the romantic essence of reality, striving for authenticity without sacrificing visual appeal. Inspiration was drawn from a variety of sources, including historical photographs or the artwork of Russian landscape painter Sergey Basov.

The missions are situated either in villages, characterized by modest homes of ordinary people and dominant churches, or in cities, where the local architectural elements reflect influences from the Old Believers Church, the Russian Revival style, and the National Romantic style.

Design Process

The mission creation process was diverse. In some instances, Level Designers envisioned a location first, weaving captivating objectives into the environment as they built it. In other cases, the process was just the opposite.

Bringing a real-world representation into a game requires multiple adjustments to enhance the visual appeal and gameplay functionality. In Last Train Home, this included altering the proportions of fields and rivers, as maintaining their actual size would have overwhelmed the mission map. The same applied to the placement of city monuments deliberately brought closer together for gameplay purposes. Another departure from historical accuracy was the abundance of fences around houses, a rarity during that era but vital for providing cover for soldiers.

One of the greatest challenges was differentiating all the locations from one another because the settlements of that era often shared similar appearances. We tried to make the characters of the cities and villages unique and memorable.

Creative Expression

Our Level Designers enjoyed overcoming the obstacles connected to choosing a historical setting. Although the time and place were pre-defined, it allowed for creative expression and proved to be unexpectedly creative work for them. They saw it as a positive, enriching challenge.

On the other hand, for our Artists, it occasionally entailed reining in their creativity and resisting the temptation to make everything as aesthetically pleasing as possible. For instance, they envisioned machine guns as much better looking than their historical counterparts. Despite that, they were pleased to see the process of shaping the in-game world, to play with the details, and to observe how everything eventually comes together.

Learning about this territory and a completely unknown chapter of history was fascinating, and we are happy to show you, the players, how we adapted it into our game. We sincerely hope you'll appreciate our approach to crafting this world and thoroughly enjoy the experience of exploration it offers.

Soon enough, it will be your turn to explore the world of Last Train Home and see for yourself.
Stay tuned!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1469610/Last_Train_Home/

Important links

Last Train Home

Steam page: thqn.net/lth-steam
Discord: discord.gg/lasttrain
Facebook: facebook.com/lasttrainhomegame
Instagram: instagram.com/lasttrainhomegame
Website: lasttrainhome.thqnordic.com
Blog: ashbornegames.com/news

Ashborne Games

Twitter: twitter.com/AshborneGames
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Website: ashbornegames.com