Mercyrail: Havenbound

Britain collapsed about a year ago. The infection burned through London long before you got here, and what's left at Waterloo is a dark station with one loaded train in it. You're in charge of that train. It's called Mercyrail, it was paid for by a man who helped break the railway in the first place, and it's heading north to a rumoured survival colony called Haven. Nobody on board has seen it. It's a name passed along the wire, and the only place left that anyone still talks about as if it's there.

Everyone still alive at Waterloo is already on board. From here on the country is empty. Stations are dark, the broadcasts are on loops that outlived whoever recorded them, and the only new faces come from what your crew finds when they go looking. This isn't a commuter train... it's the last public service anyone has, and how you run it is up to you.

Run It All From One Terminal

You run the whole train from a CRT terminal: pick the route, read the dossiers, send the crew out and wait for their reports, all through one old screen that was only ever built to run a timetable.

Real UK Rail Network

Every station and every line comes from OpenStreetMap, about 2,600 stations and 2,800 connections, and you can go anywhere on it. The map reveals itself as you go. There's no set route north and you can take any route you like as long as you can keep the train moving. Lines get blocked by failed points, flooding, barricades and derailed stock. Clear them with fuel and spare parts, or take the slow way round.

Railway data (c) OpenStreetMap contributors, licensed under ODbL 1.0.

Decide Who Gets a Place

Every seat is another mouth to feed and water the whole way north, and the more you take the faster the hold empties, so what leaves London is your call: a first class train for a few, a steerage train for everyone else, or a mix that has to live with itself for the rest of the journey. The people you turn away are remembered.

Keep the Train Running

Keep food, fuel, medicine, water and spare parts coming into one shared hold by scavenging at stations. Repair the train at depots. Treat the sick. Every abandoned carriage you couple on changes what the train burns to move, and every survivor you bring aboard is another mouth to feed.

Decide Who Gets Passage

At Waterloo, decide who your train carries: reserve it for those who can pay their way, or make room for everyone else who can't. From there, every new arrival comes from what your search parties find: a survivor worth a seat, or an abandoned carriage worth dragging home. Whichever way you build it, that's the community you're responsible for getting to Glasgow alive.

Send the Crew Out

Need more resources? Send a crew out to search the area. Reports come back in real time and you decide whether to push deeper for a bigger haul or bring them home before someone gets hurt. Go too far and people come back wounded, infected, or not at all. Sometimes they find survivors who need a seat, or an abandoned carriage worth coupling on. Crew get better the more they go out, which makes losing one hurt more.

Every Choice Matters

The story runs the whole length of the line, several arcs deep, and every choice you make in it matters. Who you help, who you turn away, what you pay and what you refuse. None of it is forgotten. The train that reaches Haven is the one you made.

Featuring Music by Voidforce

The soundtrack features darksynth and synthwave tracks by Voidforce, an electronic artist from Trondheim,

Norway known for cinematic, story-driven concept albums.