As a child, in those moments when stuck in on a long journey, there’s sometimes not much for you to do outside of peering out the window and making a game of the world around you.
Aurora Railway takes a somewhat mundane train journey and puts it through this process. Made for the WPI Chill Jam, it follows the story of a penguin heading home for their grandfather’s funeral.
What should be a simple train journey becomes something different, however, as they find themselves stuck with none of their normal distractions to help them through the wait. Instead they lean on a little game they were taught by their grandfather while younger – something they call scene sledding.
Scene sledding is something I did as a child while staring out of car windows as my parents drove from home to wherever we were camping or staying on our vacations. I’d imagine a jumping character, bouncing from post to post, running along road barriers and occasionally bouncing from cloud to cloud when the terrain became too obstructed. In Aurora Railway, it isn’t so different, however the arctic train travelled hilly, snowy tundra rather than fields and roadsides. For me, finding scene surfing in a game was quite a cute little moment.
While only a short game, Aurora Railway has some nice introspection on how we value our time and how we remember those we have lost, and being a pico-8 title, it can be played in browser — always a bonus.
Aurora Railway is available for free via the Pico-8 microconsole, browser, or on Itch.io.
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