Mixing genres is always a fun way to spice up old formulas. Star Wars blended fantasy-style magic and swords with a space opera setting, while Blade Runner melded film noir with futuristic robots. Now The Moonwalls have done something similar with the first episode of The Train for the iPhone and iPod Touch. The setting is an intriguing mix of totalitarian, 1984-ish future with fantasy magic; a world in which a man named Martin must take a train to see his long-distance girlfriend, Isabell, deep in the heart of a police state. It is an adventure filled with danger, intrigue, and a plot twist or two, but alas, also with clunky controls, terrible grammar, and only sparsely developed characters. There’s a lot of potential for a great story here, but the series has a long way to go from this debut effort.

In The Train, magic entered the world due to an accident with a giant particle accelerator in 2012, throwing everything into chaos. Soon a charismatic and powerful mage took over and declared himself Emperor, and through many years of tyrannical leadership, he has since turned the world into an Orwellian nightmare. What makes Martin’s journey so potentially dangerous is that the Emperor, in a paranoid effort to ensure his continued rule, has outlawed the practice of all magic other than his own. Martin is a “painting mage”, or someone who can draw objects into existence and take objects from existing paintings. This will make him a wanted man if anybody discovers his abilities, and in the first scene some police officers begin searching the train for renegade mages. Martin concludes he must escape, though how the police could possibly tell he has magical abilities is never fully explained.

Ironically, Martin remains on the train for no more than 5-10 minutes of playing time, covering only two locations to explore. The rest of his journey is a mixture of travel by car, teleportation, and a brief trip on top of a second, different train. Why the series is called The Train isn’t at all clear yet, but perhaps something was lost in translation, as the English localization for this game is definitely lacking. Upon its initial release, the translation was so bad that at times it was impossible to even tell what the characters were trying to convey. The developers found a new translator upon hearing early criticism, and while the resulting text is certainly improved, it’s still far from perfect, so we get moments like a policeman telling you to “stay put on your sit and wait”, and a blade-wielding urchin warning you to “stay on the knife distance.” It’s commendable that The Moonwalls reacted so quickly and are continually striving to improve their game, which hopefully bodes well for future episodes, but lines like this do still tend to take you out of this opening installment.

Even with the improved translation, the characters aren’t really fleshed out very much. One of the first people you meet, who more or less becomes your travelling companion for the game, greets you by threatening you with a knife. Fair enough, as this young woman is wary, homeless, and meeting Martin for the first time. But then why does she trustingly give Martin her knife after about seven sentences of dialogue? The relationship between these two forms the basis of the game, but it never really develops past the two of them irritating each other, like an oddly written buddy movie.

Other characters appear, but often very briefly and without much personality to speak of. One mysterious figure hints that they know Martin from somewhere, then disappears for the rest of the game, while another reveals himself to be a member of the anti-Emperor resistance known as the Brotherhood of the Phoenix. This is all the development you really get from these characters. There’s a plot twist of sorts that strongly implies there’s much more to Martin and his knife-wielding companion, but this comes right at the end and is really more a promise of developments to come than anything else. For the most part, the individuals in this debut episode come off as fairly two-dimensional.

This lack of depth might partly be a result of the graphics as well. Each character has a single pose and expression, and nothing else. Martin’s face never moves even a single twitch throughout his harrowing journey. While the game’s art budget was likely limited, this has a negative impact on the connection with the protagonist. I understand why a random police officer doesn’t emote much, but was it really that impossible to draw a few more versions of Martin’s face depicting varying states other than a neutral one? Granted, a particular character takes her hat off at one point revealing a slightly different look, but even her expression remains static throughout.