Freight Misconductor is a pixel art railroad switching puzzle game, inspired by model railway shunting puzzle layouts like A. Wright's Inglenook Sidings and J. Allen's Timesaver.
In Freight Misconductor, you operate SLYM #11513, a modern Advanced Steam Locomotive on the alien planet Gymnome, to shunt trains between siding tracks in increasingly convoluted rail yards, while minimizing your move count and time so as to hopefully keep your Engineer and Conductor-Brakegoo's spirits up.
Are you ready to be an alien railroader? Yes? Good.
Welcome to Planet Gymnome
Sorry about the mess. You see, a global oil crisis has just befallen the planet, and as a result diesel trains have had to be replaced by modernized steam engines. No matter; there's still work to be done, lots of freight to move. Big articulated steam engines shift thousands of tons of freight all across the planet's railways.
But that's not your job. Your locomotive is a switcher, tasked with shunting cars within a single rail yard at a time. Sometimes you're building trains for other crews, sometimes you're servicing industries connected to the railroad, sometimes you're just cleaning up after the last train crew who didn't do their job right! Either way you've got your work cut out for you, many of these yards have rather tight and complex track plans which make maneuvering your cars across the yard quite the challenge!
Each level in Freight Misconductor is a new railyard at a different station on the South Lymer Railway (SLYM), a 3.04₆ glip (1096mm) narrow gauge line with interchanges for many other nearby railways and plenty of industries to serve. There's over 20 hours of gameplay across story mode and standalone challenges, and that's before accounting for the replay value added by the randomization of car placements!
(And of course the game respects your time by ensuring you can save and quit at any time without losing progress, so you can work on even the longest levels in bite-size chunks without losing your flow.)
Meet the Crew
Auranjuse and Blaeb, your Advanced Steam locomotive's Gymnomi goo crew.
Auranjuse, the Conductor/Brake slimegirl, delivers the work orders from dispatcher or the yard manager, and they help with throwing the switches and coupling cars. Blaeb, the slime Engineer--that's you--runs the engine and determines which cars need to be coupled or uncoupled and which switches to throw. Blaeb is eager to please--and to Auranjuse that means finishing the job as quickly and efficiently as possible.
Just not so quickly that you end up derailing cars or damaging sensitive cargo.
Features
Physics based train simulation with momentum, slack action, and derailment.
Simple controls mode (forward/backward) for casual gamers.
Advanced controls mode (brake, throttle, reverser) for railfans or those looking for an extra challenge.
Over 50 levels with over 20 hours of gameplay.
Save/Load within levels to chew through even long levels in bite-size chunks.
Two playable locomotive classes:
Advanced Steam Mallet Tank Engine: a small modernized steam shunter with electromechanical controls.
Broad Gauge Garratt: a huge articulated steam locomotive with manual controls and a gamified steam simulation.
Dual Gauge rail yard levels--a first for the genre! Switch train cars that are too big for your own tracks!
Narrative cutscenes featuring the alien crew of the train.