Thursday, 22 October 2026

A Normal Train Game

Crying children was one of those things I used to be completely unable to handle.  Not in any overt way, I wouldn't freak out in public or start yelling or anything like that but getting myself away from the sound of crying babies would be priority number 1 in a siuation like that.  So imagine my glee when I stumbled across A Normal Train Game in my Steam discovery queue, a game about removing the babies from the situation rather than yourself.  

Its a very small little arcade game where you load into a subway train and along each car there are a number of unattended screaming babies.  Your goal is to run through the train as fast as possible picking up the babies and throwing them out of the nearby windows.  Each baby you chuck gets you a point, there's an alien baby that gives you a bonus and you just keep going to see how high you can get your score.  Surprisingly, for such a simple concept the game is really challenging.  You would think yeeting a baby through a subway window would be an easy task but the phsyics are sort of strange and actually dunking the child can sometimes be quite difficult.  There's also the other passengers who refuse to move for the betterment of the train car environment so sometimes babies will bounce wildly off the other passengers and prevent you from landing those sick dunks.  On top of all that, there's an extremely tight time limit on each dunk that you must fulfil and failing to get a dunk within that time ends your run instantly.  With a little practice with the windows the timer stops being a massive problem but babies can be on the seats, floor and the luggage shelf up top and its extremely easy in the heat of the moment to miss one of the sneakier babies.  It's got that addicitive "one more run" quality where you'll fire it up to try it based on its insane premise and end up playing it for like, 2 hours.  

You may think that the idea of chucking babies out of a moving subway train may be abhorrent, especially to me since I'm a father of two but I think the idea is hilarious.  If you're a parent and you haven't at least once wanted to chuck your kid through a sheet of glass or out of a moving vehicle you are a fucking liar.  Obviously you would never do it, obviously you would never do anything to harm your own flesh and blood but there are absolutely some particularly annoying tantrums you've experienced that have you playing out the situation in your minds eye and then dismissing it.  Being able to play out the fantasy in an extremely cartoonish manner such as this is extremely cathartic.  The game doesn't really have enough content to suggest to the average person for more than a couple of runs but instead of playing it as an arcade game and using it as a stress reduction tool for parents, the game has a lot of value.  

It costs no money and is worth a chuckle so give it a download and a quick spin for an hour or so.  If you're of a certain age you may know what I mean when I say that it has big "early newgrounds" energy only its a thing made in like...unity and not flash.  Try it and let me know how high you got your score