Can developers Aesthetician Labs and Rami Ismail mash enough words and genres together to make something worthy of blaming Australia for it?
Australia Did It: End-of-the-World Railway Defence Business is a turn-based strategy game with tower defence, roguelite, and auto-battler mechanics, as well as something called reversed bullet hell (don’t ask me what that is because I don’t know).
Railrunning
Set in a post-apocalyptic wasteland of the Australian desert, Australia Did It centres around corporations moving cargo around Australia via train. As it turns out, these corporations would rather throw lives at a problem than money.
As a railrunner, it’s your job to make sure the cargo reaches its destination by any means necessary. Lives will be lost along the way, but who cares? Just buy more.
The End of the World Looks Gorgeous.
Australia Did It features stunning pixel art from artist Castpixel, bringing the dried-up wasteland of the Atlantic to life with monsters, robots, mutants, and your ever-evolving crew of mercenaries in an explosion of gorgeous 2.5d character models and environments.
The audio is a slow loop of background music, with the conductor being the only spoken dialogue. I believe the conductor is voiced by Alanah Pearce and definitely fits the Australian setting.
Gameplay Loop
With so many genres mashed into Australia Did It, how does it all work?
The game is split up into two distinct parts. An auto battler and a turn-based defence section.
You start out your run at a station, which is a 7×7 set of squares. Your goal for this portion of your run is to hire mercenaries and defend the train while it’s being repaired at the station.
You can hire mercs by spending cindermint, a resource that is earned from surviving waves and killing enemies. These mercs are hired at level 1 and are either a shotgunner, gunslinger, or a radshot.
Each unit has different attack patterns and damage modifiers, with enemy units having strengths and weaknesses, so you will have to counter them by choosing the opposing element. There are only 3, so it makes it nice and easy.
Once your mercenaries have been hired, you can put them anywhere within the station, keeping in mind they can only attack when they are on the outermost tile.
Now we wait. You will have turn for turn with the enemy; they will advance, and you just blast them down, earning more cindermint. As you earn more, you can hire more. This is where the experimenting fun begins. Each unit of the same level can be merged with other units to create more powerful ones.
If you combine two level 1 Radshots, they will become a level 2 Radshot. Which does more damage. Now if you combine two level 2 Radshots, they will create a level 3 Hazmire, which has a shorter range but will now cause weaken and can attack multiple enemies in range.
Now if you combine two level 2 Gunslingers, you will get a level 3 Auto Pistols, which does increased damage.
Now here’s the fun part: if we now combine our level 3 Hazmire and our level 3 Auto Pistols, we get a level 4 Stormcaster, which now does radiation damage, which is a damage-over-time attack, and it can cover more lanes.
According to the developers, there are 1500 combinations, while I found quite a few; 1500 does seem like a stretch, but I could be wrong.
There is no time limit per se, so you are free to decide what units you want and take your time, but you do have an estimated departure time at which the enemies will increase in both number and power.
So, you must hold off for several rounds and then board the train. You are not tied to it, though; if you want to leave early, you can. However, fighting is the only way we can make decent money to make more units. But the train does not leave instantly; you will have 2 moves to get everyone on the train.
Those who do not make it on board are left behind. This is where our inventory management comes into play. There are only six spots on the train; if you have had to hire more units to defend the station, they are lost. So, pick wisely.
If you are unable to defend the station and it gets overrun, it’s game over. No matter how far you have gotten.
If you manage to make it out alive, our next mechanic is introduced.
Auto- Battle Madness
Between the stations, an auto battler plays out. Your train is swarmed by bugs and mutants; it’s a pretty sure-fire win, but there will be parts where you have to focus fire on bigger units. I have never failed a run during this part.
Once you reach the next station, we need to do it all again. This time we can upgrade more and start creating some powerhouse units.
It’s well worth exploring, and some combinations are much better than others. I made a railgunner dude that did massive damage but would erupt into flames, damaging himself every time he shot. So I wasted so many resources creating this dude that just died after a few uses.
You can select different routes to take; some of them are more dangerous than others and don’t really seem to give any better rewards.
This is where Australia Did It: End-of-the-World Railway Defence Business starts to fall apart for me.
With most roguelites, you are meant to fail. Repeatedly. What makes you want to try again is getting a little bit further through some permanent upgrades or bonuses for the next run. Australia Did It has no power creep or reward system. So, when you fail, you just start again at zero. Which, again, would be fine if there was some sort of skill issue; however, with every level randomly generating enemy types and some of them being so overpowered, it lost that initial spark of exploration. After failing several 45-minute-plus runs in a row, with nothing to show for it, it started to become a little repetitive.
Performance.
Australia Did It was reviewed on PC, and while it’s not heavily taxing on your graphics card, it ran extremely well on Ultra quality and never skipped a beat.
Verdict.
Australia Did It: End-of-the-World Railway Defence Business has got some fantastic bones, with its gorgeous art direction and the thrill of finding new unit combinations was a lot of fun during the initial hours. I think Australia Did It will be enjoyed by the most die-hard Roguelike and strategy fans, but with no power creep, most casual fans of the genre will feel frustrated with not making progress.
Gamer Social Club would like to thank the Publishers for a copy of Australia Did It: End of the World Railway Defence Business.
Australia Did It: End of the World Railway Defence Business was reviewed on PC and will release on the 10th of November for PC via Steam.
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