Denshattack!

Denshattack appeared from nowhere in August at Gamescom to become one of the major highlights of the annual show in Germany. In the game, you play as a runaway train rampaging its way through Japan as it pulls off tricks as though it were on a Tony Hawk skateboard. It’s colorful, bombastic, weird, and undeniably enticing.

“The idea actually came while playing with a small Japanese toy train model, making it jump, flip, and do tricks like a finger skate,” game and studio director David Jaumandreu writes to us over e-mail. “We started imagining how fun it would be if real trains could move like that. At first, the idea sounded bizarre, but it just clicked for us, especially given how much Japanese trains have stuck with us since our trips there in the late ’90s. We put together a small prototype over a couple of days and it quickly felt like there was something there. From the start, the mix of Skate, trains, and Japan felt completely natural to us.”