Old School Gamer chats with RailGods of Hysterra Troglobytes’ Art Director Lucian Iurino, who discusses the game’s development, inspiration and goals for the future.
About RailGods of Hysterra:
RailGods of Hysterra, a cooperative base-building survival action game set in a twisted Lovecraftian dreamscape from developer Troglobytes Games and publisher Digital Vortex Entertainment. Showcasing its titular celestial locomotive, the new trailer delves into the challenges of surviving a post-apocalyptic Lovecraftian horror, where players must keep their RailGod fueled by hunting, trapping, and sacrificing monsters summoned by the Great Old Ones to power their journey through the treacherous Wastelands of Hysterra.
Old School Gamer Magazine: How was this game born?
Lucian Iurino: We were approaching the finishing phases of our previous project and some team members had a little bit more free time to spend on exploring new ideas, prototypes and games from other studios. We had been playing lots of action games and soul-likes because of our upcoming game, so to take a break from that we were trying some different genres, mostly survival games.
At the time, games like Valheim and V Rising were all the rage. We also played lots of games with a more laid-back approach, like Graveyard Keeper. It was in that period that the idea for RailGods of Hysterra came into our minds.
We did some market research and convinced ourselves that there definitely was space enough for something like a survival game on Steam (people seemed to love them), but given the sheer amount of games released every year, we still needed to find that spark to differentiate ourselves from the competition.
It came from Saverio, our Lead Designer. He was binge-watching the Snowpiercer TV series, which he enjoyed a lot, so he proposed to make a survival / base-building game where your base is…well, a giant train.
The final touch was brought in by our obsession with cosmic horror and Lovecraft’s works. Everything started glueing together et voilà, RailGods of Hysterra was born.
Old School Gamer Magazine: What is your role in the game?
Iurino: I’m the Art Director for this game. I give the initial push to all the various artists working on the project, and then make sure all the things fit together with as few problems as possible.
Having taught myself some programming as well, I often act as a “bridge” between artists and programmers, to make sure they’re on the same page and everything goes as expected.
Old School Gamer Magazine: What has development been like?
Iurino: If the definition of “emotional roller coaster” has a meaning, then it perfectly depicts the development of RailGods. The prototype and pre-production phases went really fine, we had tons of fun laying down the foundations for this project.
The struggles begun when we started looking around for a publisher. We talked to dozens of them and while almost all of them were interested, very few seemed to have the capacity to fully support such a project, mostly because of the current situation in the gaming industry: right after the Covid period, when people invested in games like crazy, things started to wear off, people were being laid off, projects were being closed and gaming outlets were literally disappearing from the scene from day to night.
Finding the right partner for RailGods in this scenario has proven to be one of the most difficult things we had to do in our career, but after many other highs and lows that I will just spare here, in the end we made it and found the right people, so we’re now fully back on track and working towards the game launch with a trustworthy partner that cares about the game and wants to see it succeed as much as we do.
Old School Gamer Magazine: What makes this game special?
Iurino: Besides a very special setting and some peculiar game mechanics you will not find anywhere else, I think players will perceive all the “indie” love that was poured into this game. We love our job, we love making games and we do it the old-fashioned way: no AI, no bought assets. We do every single bit ourselves and I really do hope players will notice and appreciate our efforts.
Old School Gamer Magazine: What games influenced this one the most?
Iurino: As stated earlier, the main influences have been V Rising, Valheim and Graveyard Keeper.
Old School Gamer Magazine: What were the major lessons learned?
Iurino: Making games is something you never really stop learning; there’s always something new around the corner, and you have to adapt quickly to new scenarios. Now more than ever the current situation of the gaming industry is undergoing deep transformations that will change it in ways we can only make assumptions about, so I’d say that the number one lesson learned is: adapt or die.
Old School Gamer Magazine: Would you like to add any final words to this thread before we wrap things up here?
Iurino: Yes! Support indie games, support original games made with heart and passion. That’s where the interesting things are happening now.
Old School Gamer Magazine: Do you think preserving older gameplay mechanics in new games is important?
Iurino: Absolutely. If you have a look at our track record, you’ll see that all of our games are literally modeled on gameplay mechanics from the past. Our debut game, HyperParasite, is a love letter to a long gone era of gaming, that of the 80s. We think that today we have kind of forgot the true essence of videogames and we need to re-learn it. This of course does not mean that today’s games are all bad, but we believe old games have still a lot to teach us, and combining this with modern technology, we can truly make wonders.
Old School Gamer Magazine: The marketplace is crowded. How do you think you stand out?
Iurino: RailGods of Hysterra offers a very particular gaming experience for survival games enthusiasts. There are hundreds of survival and base-building games out there, but how many give you the opportunity to build, nurture and make friend with an eldritch horror entangled with a steam train’s locomotive? I mean, that’s just plain crazy!
Old School Gamer Magazine: How have your previous experiences in industry helped this game?
Iurino: We learned a lot about making games with each project we made. Besides the technical skills required, there’s a whole world of knowledge to be acquired: marketing, PR, publishing, networking, etc. At some point, we decided to learn porting our own games ourselves on consoles, and that’s a whole new field entirely. We poured all the things we know so far into RailGods, but it’s just another step in our adventure.
Old School Gamer Magazine: How do you want this game to ultimately be remembered?
Iurino: We’d like it to be remembered as one of the few games that truly takes advantage of the amazing works of H. P. Lovecraft. You know, there’s lots of games out there that claim to be inspired by his works, but only a few stay true to the original material and even fewer managed to recreate the same chilling experience of reading one of his stories. Lovecraft is not just “Chtulhu”, and Chtulhu is not just “tentacles”; there’s so much more!
Old School Gamer Magazine: Are there plans for any titles following RailGods?
Iurino: We hope to be able to keep working on RailGods for a long time. We have tons of crazy ideas that we’d really like to bring to players. We’re just scratching the surface here.
Old School Gamer Magazine: Anything else you’d like to add?
Iurino: Yes. Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn.
