Wanderlust: Transsiberian

Wanderlust: Transsiberian is a story about Henry, a quiet man from London as he travels the Transsiberian railway, the longest railway in the world with his talkative brother in law Vernon. As you expect, their opposite personalities would result in them having a conflict during their journey. Through dialogue choices, you can influence what happened, like keep being nice with him or just be rude. The game has 4 mechanics that can influence your choices; money, mood, stress, and fatigue. Some choices can only be made after reaching a certain point in those. What I really like about this game is the overall calming vibe, the relaxing, ambient music combined with the beautiful pictures taken by the developers, both the famous building ones and the more mundane small towns. I wish there were more pictures other than scenery though, like maybe more focusing on culture and the people, like traditional foods, souvenirs and outfits, etc as well as insets showing the pictures you can (optionally) make Henry take. The game itself isn't very long, around an hour and there isn't any rush to make dialogue choices. Wanderlust: Transsiberian, and presumably the other Wanderlust games is best enjoyed as a game you could relax to. As someone who probably won't be doing this trip anytime soon, or sadly ever, its a pretty nice virtual journey.

I just wonder if the creators ever actually had this experience. I mean this commentary on platzkart like "and many of them immediately get out a bottle of vodka". Do you really think people ride platzkart while drinking vodka all day every day? And that's where I stopped playing. It was just and excuse, but it works for me

With "the journey is the destination" in mind, Transsiberian railway is among the biggest destinations I can think of. The setup aims high, but the game brings very little extra compared to, say, a gamebook adventure. The kind of "Option X: turn to page Y" kind, you know? The story is pretty much the only content in the game, and while it's enjoyable, the game could almost work on your favourite e-ink device. No extras - almost no photos (our hero has and actively uses a camera!), no background info for either the railway or your own character. Very little in-dialog trivia. Text only, no narrator. The type of ambience music your ears will filter out after few minutes. My second - and maybe bigger - concern is about how limited the choices sometimes feel. You can somehow almost manage your two "resources" in the game - your mood (happy/sad) and your energy (awake/sleepy). But the game will make you tired when it needs to, just so it can create a situation. And soon you'll find yourself in a situation with no good choices and "who'd have done any of these" stuck in your head. All of this while everyone is drinking vodka all the time. The story is nice, and is in my eyes worth a read, but since it's forcefully linear, it's "one playthrough" type of game. In fact a 0.75 playthroughs, since the game ends sooner than described adventure. I returned to it for a second replay after two years for the sole purpose of writing this review.

Well I do like mellow, relaxing interactive novels - but this one seems like it has been put together in a hurry to make some quick money. Let me tell you why I don't like the game (spoiler ahead!): - It gets repetative, even the dialogues stay the same, no matter what decision you make. E.g. if you take a different class on a train you will still have mostly the same dialogues and story elements, even so the names of characters you meet change. - No real decisions. The storyline always keeps the same. Same places nearly always trigger the same part of the story. If you make a decision it only alters one or two sentences in the dialogues, before the story goes back to its mainline. Your decissions don't realy have an influence on the story. - Only a few graphics included. A few photos are included, nothing more. And the pics aren't even in HiRes. They look like something taken out of an early 80's comicbook. You won't realy see any of the places you are "visiting". If I had payed the full prize on this I'd have felt ripped off. Ok, the first two times I played it, it was a bit fun, so if you can get it at a reduced prize it might be a good investion for 1 or 2 hours of "play". But if you want a real interactive novel, where your decisions realy influence the later parts of your story you better get "80 days" here on GOG.

Very nice textual adventure to play at least once... and relax. Great soundtrack.