BULLETS TRAIN
Survival RTS LAST TRAIN HOME delves into historical tale-telling
By Jonathan Bolding
Soldiers have traits. Antonin is an avaricious, religious, handy, sickly, herbalist.
In Last Train Home, a military management game and tactical RTS, you’re in charge of the Czechoslovak Legion as the Russian civil war breaks out. Unable to return home by going west, you make a desperate plan: capture an armored train and traverse Siberia. Your management of the journey is both on the train, assigning jobs and doling out supplies, and on the battlefield, controlling units of ten soldiers in pausable, tactical RTS battles.
Last Train Home is not so much concerned with historicity as with giving you a glimpse into the desperate mood of a time and place. The Czech legionaries don’t want to fight on either side of the Russian Civil War. They really just want to go home, but nobody wants a large band of unaligned armed soldiers meandering about—least of all the Red revolutionaries, who quickly become your primary enemies.