trainWreck

trainWreck

media	visual novel
engine	Ren'Py 8
store/dl	Steam itch.io
platform	Windows Linux
release date	TBD
genre	drama mystery? comedy???? adventure??
player count	single player
rating	16+
content warnings	Heavy Foul Language Violence & Murder Gun Violence Psychological Torture Death Toxic Relationships
dlc	Extraneous Circumstances (Release TBD)
requirements	Windows: 7 or later Linux: Mint Cinnamon 20 or equivalent Mac TBA

trainWreck is a Ren'Py visual novel weyylh has been working on since 2013. Its planned release date is when i finish it. Current progress is approximately 40%, with art and scripting to be the last 50%. Will be available on Steam and Itch.io for free, with an optional paid downloadable content package.

The story takes place over the course of 5 in-game days, with certain portions of the game optionally occurring outside of this timespan, depending on the choices made.

The game features nine endings, not including dead ends.

The kidnapping is probably where things went irreversibly wrong. Or maybe it was the impending war they'd been unintentionally involved in. Or was it when the talking cat showed up? Perhaps it was weeks earlier, when the “Narrator” began following them around? Honestly, it was probably all of those things, and things from before even then that we couldn't have known about.

What we do know is that Mika and Kyle's relationship was always shaky at best, and current events weren't really helping. The secrets they'd been keeping from each other were being forced into the open, and their precariously balanced friendship could make or break at any moment. That's where you come in.

Experience the déjà vu of navigating stranger and stranger situations over and over again and find out when things started going downhill. Were Mika and Kyle ever really friends? Are they just drifting apart? Or will they come out of this stronger than before? It's up to you to decide their fate.

The game begins about a week before Day 1, when Mika meets someone who introduces themselves as “the Narrator”. The story quickly skips forward to Day 1, where Mika can choose to go to the beach, the mall, or simply stay at home. Regardless of what the player chooses, Mika eventually reunites with Kyle, their best friend since childhood.

Events around Mika suddenly begin to spiral out of control, starting with a freak tidal wave, then a talking stuffed cat, and (spoiler) the sun disappearing from the sky. Mika's sister Momi soon arrives upon request from their parents to “babysit” Mika while they're abroad, and tags along with the odd group, acting as the driving force to push Mika to action.

Mika, realizing that they're about to be socially exhausted by the constant presence of the combination of Momi, Kyle, the Cat, and the Narrator, is faced with a choice: run away now or push through it. The choice ultimately doesn't matter, as they eventually regroup no matter what in an effort to leave the main island of Lamahii. The docks, however, are clogged with others thinking the same thing, and so the party uses an alternative means of transport gathered earlier.

It's around this time that they learn (spoiler) the wave had forced a society of underwater cockroaches (known as the Kkenginr) onto the shore, and so they were taking refuge on the beaches near Kyle's home.

Characters in trainWreck

Mika
the main player character. genderfluid, and their pronouns can be he/she (default) or they/them (nonbinary), which is determined at the start of the game.

Kyle
the deuteragonist. Mika's best friend.

the Narrator
the tritagonist. a disembodied voice that started following Mika around recently.

Momi
Mika's step-sister.

the Cat
a stuffed cat that is strangely attached to Kyle.

The game has two DLC endings planned, both of which are intended to be experienced after completing at least one ending. The endings are to be packaged together for $1.99 USD as “Extraneous Circumstances”. And until Steam makes it so DLC achievements don't count towards 100%, none of the paid DLC will have any.

Part of the base game, accessible from the Bonus Content menu. A short prologue that expands on Kyle's point of view on the events leading up to the start of the game. Has spoilers for the main plot of the game, so it's strongly recommended to play the game to the end at least once.

One of the endings in Extraneous Circumstances. A special route that changes the results of a certain choice, which can either be toggled to integrate into the game itself to override the original result, or you can choose to simply start from the scene where the choice occurs and continue on with the new scenario. This one doesn't need you to have beaten the game to understand the story, it's just I think it's good to see how it would have gone normally. But you do you.

One of the endings in Extraneous Circumstances. Another “what if?” scenario intended to be viewed only after obtaining the Confusion ending, acting as an alternative epilogue. Accessed from the Bonus Content menu.

under construction

The game has achievements, which (should I manage to get the game onto Steam, lord willing) will translate into Steam achievements, if you're the kind of person who cares.

Development began back when Ren'Py's default game ratio was 4:6. The game was a meta-humor absurdist comedy with the Narrator being an author stand-in who explicitly did their best to make the main character suffer as much as possible. And then I accidentally came up with a plot. And then Ren'Py had a major update and I took that chance to completely start over.

On July 7, 2017, the game file was corrupted as weyylh hit “save” right as their computer BSoD'd, but thankfully there was a backup save and so only those changes were lost.

The game's development went on hiatus for several years before picking back up near the end of 2021, when the actual plot was finally written, as before this, the script was being written on the fly with no planning into how the game would end. Now that there is a clearer vision on what the story is, weyylh took this as a sign for another script refresh, prioritizing cleaning up the code before continuing writing. In May of 2024, weyylh finally updated to Ren'Py 8, and as of now, the game is considered to be on “version 4”.

In 2025, upon outlining “Final Reset”, a minigame was added to the game. This meant a demo would actually have a purpose, and so a demo was written. The minigame itself works fine so long as I don't try and customize it. You see where the problem might be.

• The prototypal version of the game had a similar concept as the first version, where the narrator would constantly change what was going on in order to confuse and anger the player character. For reasons I have long since forgotten, this experimental game was heavily centered around ducks.
  • This was weyylh's first visual novel, and counting its evolution into trainWreck, is also one of two that have managed to remain visual novels throughout development.
• Originally, the game was set to have 23 endings, but these were more “loose ideas of how the game could end”, and were very quickly merged into the 9 endings there are now. Most, if not all, of the ideas have been incorporated into the remaining endings.
• The DLC was created as an optional way to support the game via Steam (and pay for the store page), since the game was always going to be free. Upon adding an itchio release, the other options didn't seem fair and so the DLC are paid there, as well. They were going to be sold separately, but due to Steam's pricing being dumb and stupid, they are now packaged together so they can be listed at the same price in both stores.
  • Nothing is stopping you from buying the itchio version of the DLC and placing it where it goes in the Steam version, if it still ends up cheaper that way. With no achievements in the DLC, you lose nothing but time.

Steam store page

trainwreck

Walkthrough and Ending Guide