Screenshots of the game as it currently is in development.
Players have the ability to pick-up and drop items around the world.
What?
Trying to find your way home from an abandoned train station. Along the way you’ll have to solve surrealistic puzzles. Eventually you find out that the elderly woman you play suffers from Alzheimer’s disease and that she lost her way in the woods. The puzzles are what for other people would be minor tasks but due to Alzheimer’s become challenging.
Intermittently you also play the woman’s husband that’s looking for his wife in the woods. In the woman’s timeline her husband has already passed, something you find out at the end of the game.
Screenshots of one of the interior levels within the game as it currently is in development.
Players have the ability to push and pull items. Even throw them down a ledge.
How?
The puzzles you’re presented with have a surrealistic nature to them, a door on the ceiling you need to get to or a key you need to grab but keeps on disappearing when you get to it. The puzzles represent things that become challenging when you have Alzheimer’s, things you normally might not even think twice about doing.
One of the environments in the game (in development)
The game allows players to take a closer look at certain objects
Why?
The game aims to tell a touching story about what it’s like to be someone with Alzheimer’s. Someone older, someone with memory problems. The elderly are not often represented in games as the protagonists and with When the train comes we aim to provide a representation of the elderly that doesn't put them in a position where they need to be saved but do so themselves.
More than half of today’s gamers are below 50 and 18% of gamers are below 18. These people don’t usually have to think about Alzheimer’s or how to communicate with the elderly. Through playing this game younger generations can learn to be patient, help those that need help and to be kind towards the elderly.
Credits
Kela van der Deijl // co-creator, interaction designer, narrative designer, animator
Mischa Penders // co-creator, art director, character designer, animator