The Last Crossing by Malorym

[raw]
made by Malorym for Ludum Dare 59 (JAM)

Embark on a journey as a crossing signal to find your love and save train babies.

Description

Vudy, an old railroad crossing signal from '59, survives the eradication of humanity. After ten long and lonely years spent in his place, he hears something unexpected: a railway crossing bell, coming from far away.

Goal

  • Walk towards the mysterious bell sounds as you try to avoid and shut down wild malfunctioning trains.
  • Save train babies from being run over by the trains and gain love.
  • Defeat the boss to reach your happy end. screenshot_tree2.png

Controls

  • Use WASD to move around.
  • Use E to aim at a train to enter the rhythm bell mode.
  • Match the timing of the indicators multiple times using E to shut down the train. image2.png

Credits

  • The game (coding, art, music) was made by DavidtheRailfan and Malorym

Ratings

Overall 483th 3.5⭐ 20🧑‍⚖️
Fun 520th 3.25⭐ 20🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 482th 3.306⭐ 20🧑‍⚖️
Theme 267th 4⭐ 20🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 307th 3.972⭐ 20🧑‍⚖️
Audio 208th 3.806⭐ 20🧑‍⚖️
Humor 124th 3.778⭐ 20🧑‍⚖️
Mood 371th 3.722⭐ 20🧑‍⚖️
Given 30🗳️ 9🗨️

Feedback

Divarium
Apr 21st · 12:35 UTC
Very fun concept, nice graphics, the ryhtm part is dificult to succed in but is original. Good job !
BlindSisyphus
Apr 21st · 12:36 UTC
Hey, i just played it and the sound of signal to stop trains hit hard haha. Cool concept.
metalim
Apr 21st · 12:42 UTC
nice theme interpretation. Third level is suddenly hard
Zazzar
Apr 21st · 12:52 UTC
Very nice visuals and audio works well with it too to set a good mood. The wacky premise of saving train babies to help out a lonely traffic signal is reinforced by the goofy main character design so thats nice too. The scanning was a little finicky to use because its so high up on the character it doesn't always go where you expect, especially with the fast horizontal trains coming at you. The rhythm mechanic is neat but didn't quite work when you captured multiple trains in one beam and kept giving me two prompts to hit which lost me health. A little more light in the night level was likely needed, I stopped caring about saving the train babies :( cause I couldn't see where they were and they would just die out of nowhere. I would love to have seen what was at the end but I did get a crash when fighting the boss that happened after the first boss scan and all the rogue trains activate at once. Overall a good submission with nice visuals and audio, but some bugs and balancing to iron out.
🎤 Malorym
Apr 21st · 13:48 UTC
@zazzar Thanks so much for taking the time to play and for this detailed feedback, it's so extremely insightful!! It helps a lot, we'll definitely work on these things in the future.
🎤 Malorym
Apr 21st · 13:52 UTC
@metalim Thanks very much, and we'll think more about balancing!
🎤 Malorym
Apr 21st · 13:52 UTC
@blindsisyphus Thanks so much!!
🎤 Malorym
Apr 21st · 13:53 UTC
@divarium Thanks a lot for playing, I'm glad!!
DavidTheRailfan
Apr 23rd · 22:15 UTC
The **OST** of The Last Crossing is now on Bandcamp! Link in the Information section on the game's Itch page.
kkkyia
Apr 25th · 13:22 UTC
Love it! Excellent graphic and audio and animation! But I'm bit of stuck on the boss level, every time I scan, then die immediately. I want to know how to pass the final.
DavidTheRailfan
Apr 26th · 10:46 UTC
@kkkiya Thank you very much for your feedback! We're really glad you enjoy the graphics, audio, and animation! We plan to further refine the audio experience by adding some new SFX and possibly other enhancements. And to pass the final level, I think one needs to especially aim at the boss (the large electric loco) and do that rhythm thing with it several times. Beware of the minions (the small locos). Once the boss is defeated, you go to the right as usual to finish the level.
anku
Apr 27th · 20:53 UTC
Great game - pure chaos, with really good pacing. The art and sound are both solid. I did miss having a dash in such a fast-paced game, and also, your build on itch doesn’t seem to launch. Still, great work overall!
JoeGreen
Apr 30th · 07:40 UTC
Beautiful, stylish, and a cool concept. A really pleasant game. That said, I didn't understand why using E drains HP, so after a couple of tries I just stopped using it altogether.
dqso
Apr 30th · 09:24 UTC
Great visuals! Though playing at night turned out to be really tough :D
Le Don
Apr 30th · 11:05 UTC
Cute game! I really like the idea of wild trains roaming around and having to safe baby trains. As someone else mentioned, the scanner seems to get a bit awkward when scanning multiple trains and it might be helpful if there was some kind of indication in which direction the character would scan. I also thought losing health when failing at the scanner was a bit too punishing, so I stopped using it. It also seems the train and baby train placement was random, which meant some baby trains were impossible to save. Really like the art and audio in this, those are amazing.
🎤 Malorym
May 01st · 09:57 UTC
@anku Thanks so much for playing and the comment! Oh and dash ability sounds like a great idea, I might think about adding it, especially for the harder levels.
And that's good to know abut itch, it still seems to run normally in my browser, but I'll try figuring out what might be causing issues!
🎤 Malorym
May 01st · 10:19 UTC
@joegreen @le-don
Thanks a lot for the helpful feedback and for playing!
And oh that's something we totally forgot to mention in the game, that each mistimed attempt will reduce the HP a bit.
I'll try to add such missing info, and also reduce the amount of health loss, or think of alternative less punishing consequences. Aim indication and some more restrictive random placement are really great ideas too! Thanks so much!
DavidTheRailfan
May 01st · 14:25 UTC
@dqso Thank you very much for your kind feedback! We really appreciate it and we'll try our best with the game's further development!
binroot
May 03rd · 05:48 UTC
Well done! I for one love the difficulty!
DavidTheRailfan
May 06th · 22:55 UTC
@binroot Thanks so much for your kind feedback, we appreciate it!
liz_h
May 07th · 03:20 UTC
Love the pixel art and the music! The premise is so weird, but also so cool and well executed.
I think the mechanic of freezing trains is a bit difficult to get used to though, it might help if pressing "E" at the wrong time didn't result in losing health. But overall it was still a super fun experience though! I'm glad I had the chance to play it.
BorodaOlen
May 07th · 09:21 UTC
Good job, stylish art, but the dark level was already difficult to play, and my game froze.
![2026-05-07_12-17-44.png](///raw/00f/13/z/732ac.png)
woona
May 07th · 09:56 UTC
Loved the game, especially the music and! Overall, it looks very polished, the levels feel different from each other and there are so many animations. The main character is very charming.

As for gameplay, it's mostly just avoiding trains. I found freezing not very useful because it's difficult to aim and it's very unforgiving if you miss the E press. I think it would be better if instead of losing health, the frozen trains just unfreezed.
Antoine Bodin
May 07th · 10:22 UTC
Very nice art and sound! I found the rythm part a little hard because, especially when several trains are caught in the beam and it feels like only one train color shift animation gives the correct ryhtm
Thanks for this game!