Thomas the Tank Engine

 Yeah, I'm talking about Thomas

What? Is there something weird about the big blue one showing up in my Blogs? He's one of the most beloved British cultural icons is he not? So iconic that people just gloss over the fact that he originates from a series of books absolutely not made solely about him called 'The Railway Series'. So Iconic that American children have grown up with a specifically dubbed version of the show, and somehow have no idea that the series is based around English culture despite their country owning a total shambles that they call an international railway. Thomas is so iconic that everyone from Ringo Starr to George Carlin has had their hand at either narrating the series or playing the live-action character 'Mr Conductor' introducing the show. Alec Baldwin was even in the movie, but I didn't know whether that was worth bringing up given recent events surrounding that guy.

Thomas is a symbol of youth in the western world then; but do you know what he isn't? He isn't present in the video game world in the slightest! Okay, there was a PC game made back in the early 2000's, but it wasn't exactly concept exploring to a high level. 'Thomas Saves the Day' is a 2003 game published by Atari that bares no resemblance whatsoever with the episode 'Thomas Saves the Day' from Season 8 Episode 6. It's dimensionally flat, pretty graphically unappealing and lacking in scope and vision. Did you really expect anything else? Every recent Thomas game from the past decade or so have all been cheap mobile apps, which doesn't make them bad necessarily; but it does denote the audience that they were made for. Is there no place for the original Bluey on modern home consoles in the slightest?

According to the modern slate of publishers apparently not. Thomas belongs only to the screen and the phone and nowhere demanding more substance and purpose; but somehow that feels just wrong to me. Are you seriously going to tell me that there's no potential for a child-focused game around driving and managing trains? I mean: you've got the Train Simulator franchise for adults that rakes in literally thousands through painful DLC plans; clearly there's a market for train-driving that can be scaled down for children. Plus, Thomas already comes ready packaged with a whole host of characters that teach life lessons such as "Follow your assigned path in life or else the Fat Controller will be disappointed in you and that would be tantamount to holy sacrilege in our bizarre train-religion." I'm pretty sure every Thomas moral can be summed up under that.

Say we were to be given a permissive licence to create our own game based on the recognisable brand of the Thomas licence. How exactly would you go about such a task? Well I'd first start by highlighting the audience myself. We've got young children, pre-teens, the kind for which educational games are the focus. (Not least of all because at their age the only way they'll get a game is if their parents will buy it for them. So making it 'Educational' is the only way to worm past the 'projective parent block'.) But educational doesn't necessarily mean boring and static. Basic logical puzzles, concise informational splash screens, creativity engaging challenges; can all be labelled under the 'educational' banner provided you present them correctly. But how do we translate that into the world of Sodor effective? Well, I have a few off-hand ideas I came up with during a fever dream last night. (Which, incidentally, is why I'm writing about this anyway.)

Thomas as a simulation train game seems like so much of a no-brainer I genuinely cannot fathom why it hasn't happened yet. Picking up passengers and delivering them all around Sodor across famous locations from the show that fans can recognise, probably with some generous flying track camera so people can enjoy exploring the world between trips- it's what this franchise was made to one day deliver. The only potential hang-up I can see would be the fact that the original show creators kept the to-scale map of Sodor fairly close to their chest for some unknown reason- but something has to give eventually, hasn't it? There would be endless potential for special unlockable routes to Misty Island or perhaps a one-off fare to the heart of the 'mainland'- and so many alternate trains of every type... this theoretical game would just burst with content!

But what if we wanted more of a structured experience? Well the idea of a quest-driven Train game seems a bit... constrained thanks to the natural limit of controlling a vehicle constantly affixed to rails, but given the long-term popularity of the franchise and it's characters I think there might actually be some intrinsic value for fans of the show to simply interact with the personalities that they love. The hoity pretentiousness of Gordon or the annoying trolling of the Troublesome Trucks alone would make a satisfying backdrop to a simulation of Sodor bringing the island to some sort of life. And if we affixed a few basic challenges, making certain deliveries, basic logistical puzzle solving, it could be marketed for a child audience that would pick it up as a well as adult fans who would forgive the less-than-complicated design elements. (Also, we would need to have a DLC voice pack for Cranky the Crane that gives him, and only him, the voice of Takaya Kuroda. Just because.)

To prototype, imagine a mission where Thomas is required to deliver a crate of items to a station for which the only approach is up a steep hill. As wagons all have some sort of weight, Thomas would be incapable of taking every wagon at once and thus would need to plan accordingly or swap with another engine with a more rigorous frame. Maybe even throw in a time constraint there to spice things up a little. Not exactly a match for the 'Demon of Hatred' from Sekiro, but a small physical puzzle that reinforces the concepts of limitations and specialisation and breaking down an overwhelming problem to be more manageable. We could have the player take over for the Fat Controller for a day, assigning appropriate engines to the right task and witnessing the chaos of incorrect assignments. And these are just ideas I've borrowed from the show itself, there's plenty of scenarios that only a game could get away with to fill up an idea like this with content.

Thomas is a beloved franchise that has been underserved for so very long in the gaming market and it's not for want of potential. One of the most interesting omissions in quality game development are small child focused games and I think the ingredient missing to really draw those forces in is the lack of a recognisable brand to rally behind. Thomas is not the only such property that could fill that void, but it is the one that I have a weird amount of ancillary knowledge about despite having never watched it as a child myself. (I have a baby brother, that's my excuse.) All I'm saying is that it's about time someone swings around to give TT games a run for their money- showing the world that Children and Games can mean something other than Lego. Occasionally.