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Previously called "Train of thought", this locomotive puzzler caught our attention at the IndieDevDay area in Madrid, and here the producer and game designer at Little Lantern Games takes us on a ride talking through the cute, but also mind-derailing concept.
"Hi Gamereactor friends, I'm at the MAD Games Show in Madrid, an event organized by the organizations that are closer to the studios here in Spain, and I'm taking a look at some interesting indie games present here, such as Locomochi. This is a game, it's interesting because it's the second train game I see today, and the third interesting Spanish train game that I see in the past few months, including Denshattack!, of course. So what can you tell me, Jon, sets this game apart from the other train, trendy train, games we're seeing? Definitely there's happening something with trains, and I like it, not gonna lie. Locomochi is a wholesome game where you take control of a cute locomotive, and it's a puzzle game."
"So what we want is the players to control the locomotive, and move wagons around to send cargo to cute characters. So our game wants to be like for family-friendly for everyone, and to have a design that it's not punitive, you know?
Are you delivering mochi to these clients? Probably there will be some sneak peek or some easter eggs for that, yeah. You told me something very interesting about the name of the game, which is called Locomochi since a few days ago, but it was called something different before, and you are all into puns and play on words, so what can you tell me about, like, sort of the idea you had, and how it also shaped the name? That's actually interesting, because this started as my final master degree project, and it was called Train of Thought, which was maybe a little bit serious, you know? And then we entered the incubation program of GameBCN, and they helped us with the SEO, the positioning, marketing, and everything, and we also tested with players, which are also children, and they thought Locomochi, among other options, was more cute and more aligned with the vibes of the project. I lose my train of thought many times a day during the interview, sometimes live. Happens to us all, no problem. What can you tell me about the puzzle design here? What sort of puzzles do we have to tackle here?
I guess, of course, you have to deal with track change, and different stations, but give me a couple of examples. Yeah, right now, actually, it's a really simple pattern design for puzzles, because the challenge is on changing the tracks, and moving the wagons around, that sometimes they are on wrong positions, so you must must, like, take a look around, and move around to get the correct position on the wagons, but we want to go further to add new, for example, bridges, barriers, and also the thing is that each level will have some stations where there will be these cute characters that will ask you for some cargo, so this cargo is the one that you must send, and there are a lot of cargo in one level, so there maybe they need something that is on the other side, so, you know, it will be optional, some of them, and will be really different degrees of difficulty."
"And talking about delivery, and of course we're talking about a cozy game, which is, you know, as you said, it's wholesome, it's cute, what can you tell me about delivering the narrative itself? What's going on here? What's the story behind all this, if there is one? Actually, we are in development, and there are a lot of features that may be cheap or not, but, you know, the fundamentals of the game is that you are a kid, a children, playing with your toy tray game, and there's all the levels that you are playing is the imagination of these kids, you know, so these cute characters are all the toys that they bring to life on their own imagination, and that's, like, the feeling that we want to send. There will be maybe a part of the four walls, where maybe you get in connection with this kid, but on the fundamentals, it's really simple, you know? All right, and finally, what's the status of the project? You said it started as a university project, and now you're showing the Steam page for it, you have a vertical slide soon, so what can you tell me about what lays ahead this train? Of course, I must say that I am one of the eight people that we are in the team, and there are three core team people that we are working so hard full-time on this, and other that are helping us with specific features, and they are doing an incredible job from my perspective of producer. I'm really proud of what we did on the last three months, that is what you are seeing here, and our idea is, in October, to deliver vertical slice, as you see, to talk with publishers, to seek funding for the complete development of the game, and maybe doing a public test on October, you know, on Steam, so people can get really broader feedback, and tell us what they think about the project. Fantastic, I'm looking forward to buying a ticket for this train, to take a trip on this train, because I love puzzles, so thank you so much for your time, Jon. Enjoy the rest of the MAD."
