The Final Station finds horror in silence. Indie Horror Month 2016: The Quiet Apocalypse of 'The Final Station'. Travel by train through a dying world. Look after your passengers, keep your train operational, and make sure you can always reach the next station. Make your way through swarms of infected at each station. Explore mysterious and abandoned stations looking for supplies and survivors. The Final Station is a single player side-scrolling shooter video game with a train simulator and exploration elements. It was developed by Do My Best Games and published by tinyBuild, and released on August 30, 2016 for Windows, MacOS, Linux, and Xbox One, and September 2, 2016 for PlayStation 4. The game received mixed to positive reviews from critics, who praised its originality and world. The Final Station DLC 'The Only Traitor' Trailer.
Last night the BBC’s Sherlock Holmes returned for a New Year’s special. It was great. If you missed it (and have access) you should catch it on BBC iPlayer before it goes away forever (click here). The episode inspired me to think of how game theory can be used to solve some of Sherlock’s many problems. That’s what I’m going to investigate in this post.
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Just a quick disclaimer before we begin. There are many people out there much smarter than me that could use game theoretic tools to capture how Mr. Holmes uses his logic and deductive reasoning to solve all of his little puzzles. I’m a bit slow, so I’m going to assess a pretty simple puzzle faced by Mr. Holmes a long time ago in 1891.
Indeed, the return of Sherlock reminded me of an old, but pretty famous, Sherlock Holmes story written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle called “The Final Problem”. (You can access a PDF of The Final Problem here.) In this story strategic interdependence between Holmes and his arch nemesis Moriarty is particularly prevalent. Therefore, the tools of game theory can be used and, moreover, we can ask a big question: “Did Sherlock Holmes act rationally?”
The Final Problem
This story, set in 1891, introduces Holmes’s greatest opponent, the criminal mastermind Professor James Moriarty. Here’s a recap of The Final Problem to set the scene for our game.
One evening Holmes arrives at Dr. John Watson’s residence in an agitated state and with grazed and bleeding knuckles. Much to Watson’s surprise, he had apparently escaped three separate murder attempts that day after a visit from Professor Moriarty, who warned Holmes to withdraw from his pursuit of justice against him to avoid any regrettable outcome.
Holmes has been tracking Moriarty and his agents for months and is on the brink of snaring them all and delivering them to Scotland Yard. Moriarty is the criminal genius behind a highly organised and secret criminal force and Holmes will consider it the crowning achievement of his career if only he can defeat Moriarty. Moriarty is out to thwart Holmes’s plans and is well capable of doing so, for he is, as Holmes admits, the great detective’s only intellectual equal.
In response to Moriarty’s threats, Holmes asks Watson to come to the continent with him, giving him unusual instructions designed to hide his tracks to Victoria station. On meeting at Victoria Station Holmes plans that the two head to Dover in order to flee to the continent. The next day Watson follows Holmes’s instructions to the letter and finds himself waiting in the reserved first class coach for his friend, but only an elderly Italian priest is there. The cleric soon makes it apparent that he is in fact, Holmes in disguise.
As the train pulls out of Victoria, Holmes spots Moriarty on the platform, apparently trying to get someone to stop the train. Holmes is forced to take action as Moriarty has obviously tracked Watson, despite extraordinary precautions. He and Watson strategically alight at Canterbury (before reaching Dover), making a change to their planned route. As they are waiting for another train to Newhaven a special one-coach train roars through Canterbury, as Holmes suspected it would. It contains Moriarty, who has hired the train in an effort to overtake Holmes and catch him before he and Watson were to reach Dover. Holmes and Watson are forced to hide behind luggage, but they manage to make their escape to the continent!
Having made their way to Strasbourg via Brussels, Holmes gets word that Moriarty is searching for them. After a chase through Europe, finally settling in Switzerland, Moriarty catches up with Holmes and fights with him atop a waterfall at Reichenbach Falls. They both appear to fall to their deaths. Indeed, this was depicted in last nights episode!
Applying some game theory
The story of Holmes and Watson fleeing England describes a situation of strategic interdependence to which we can apply some game theory. Ssdreporter 1 0 9 download free. The three elements that we need in any game are players, strategies, and payoffs, so let’s figure these out…
- Players. For simplicity we consider only two players in this game: Sherlock Holmes and Professor Moriarty.
- Strategies. Holmes is faced with the decision of either going straight to Dover or disembarking at Canterbury, which is the only intermediate station. Moriarty, whose intelligence allows him to recognise these possibilities, has the same set of options. Therefore the strategy sets for both players contain only Dover and Canterbury.
- Payoffs. Holmes believes that if they should find themselves on the same platform, it is likely that he’ll be killed by Moriarty. If Holmes reaches Dover unharmed, he can then make good his escape. Even if Moriarty guesses correctly, Holmes prefers Dover, as then, if Moriarty does fail, Holmes can better escape to the continent.
In this game there is imperfect information: Sherlock does not know what Moriarty is going to do for sure before he moves, and vice versa. Both players must therefore select their strategies simultaneously.
The strategic-form of the game is given by the payoff matrix below:
So what type of game is this? How do we solve it?
Pure conflict and maximin strategies
The game between Holmes and Moriarty is a constant-sum game where the sum of the payoffs in each cell of the matrix give a fixed number (in this case 100). A two-player constant-sum game is a game in which the two players’ payoffs always sum to a constant. Since this property implies that a change in behaviour which raises one player’s payoff must lower the other player’s payoff, constant-sum games are situations of pure conflict. In other words, what is good for one player is bad for the other.
If you have read many Sherlock Holmes stories, you know that he is both brilliant and arrogant. While it would be uncharacteristic of him to take a conservative tack in handling a strategic situation, he is smart enough to know that Moriarty may well be his match. So, rather than think about Holmes formulating a conjecture about what Moriarty would do and then choosing a best reply, let us presume that he takes a more cautious route in selecting a strategy.
Suppose, then, that Holmes believes that whatever strategy he selects, Moriarty will have foreseen it and will act so as to minimise Holmes’ expected payoff. Holmes then wants to choose the mixed strategy that maximises his own expected payoff given his belief about Moriarty. In other words, he exercises caution by optimising against his pessimistic beliefs.
What we’ve just described Holmes as choosing is what is known as his maximin strategy. Generally speaking, a maximin strategy maximises a player’s payoff, given that the other players are expected to respond by choosing strategies to minimise that player’s payoff.
Solving games of pure conflict
To solve this game we first let p be the probability that Holmes chooses to go to Dover, and then we let q be the probability that Moriarty chooses to go to Dover.
Holmes’s maximin strategy. To derive Holmes’s maximin strategy we need to derive his expected payoff function when Moriarty chooses to go to Dover. This expected payoff function is given by: p * 20 + (1-p) * 70 = 70 – 50p .
If Moriarty chooses Canterbury, Holmes’s expected payoff function is: p * 90 + (1-p) * 10 = 10 + 80p .
We can map these expected payoff functions in the diagram below:
Thus, p = 6/13 is the mixed strategy that maximises Holmes’s expected payoff, given that whatever mixed strategy Holmes chooses, Moriarty responds so as to minimise Holmes’s expected payoff.
Moriarty’s maximin strategy. To derive Moriarty’s maximin strategy we need to derive his expected payoff function when Holmes chooses to go to Dover. This expected payoff function is given by: q * 80 + (1-q) * 10 = 10 + 70q .
If Holmes chooses Canterbury, Moriarty’s expected payoff function is: q * 80 + (1-q) * 90 = 90 – 60q .
We can map these expected payoff functions in the diagram below:
Thus, q = 8/13 is the mixed strategy that maximises Moriarty’s expected payoff, given that whatever mixed strategy Moriarty chooses, Holmes responds so as to minimise Moriarty’s expected payoff. This strategy pair is the maximin solution to the game.
The Final Solution
The Mixed Strategy Nash equilibrium of this game, therefore, is where Holmes will go to Dover with probability 6/13 (and therefore goes to Canterbury with probability 7/13), while Moriarty will go to Dover with probability 8/13 (and therefore goes to Canterbury with probability 5/13). Thus, there is a higher probability for Sherlock to alight at Canterbury in an effort get rid of Moriarty.
Yo, this is exactly what happened in the story! Gosh darn, game theory has done it again! Moreover, Sherlock seems to have acted rationally! With a good grip on game theory you can be as clever as Sherlock Holmes too!
Conclusions & John von Neumann
I think that the real hero here isn’t Sherlock Holmes… Nor is it Dr. John Watson… The real hero can only be attributed to the genius that is John von Neumann.
John von Neumann is one of the greatest mathematicians that has ever lived, and should be considered as one of the founding fathers of game theory. Specifically, he has to be credited with providing the solution concept for games of pure conflict.
He was first to really discuss the maximin property which states that for any two-player game of pure conflict, the maximin solution is a Nash equilibrium.
Furthermore, if a two-player game of pure conflict has a Nash equilibrium in which both players randomise (i.e., they don’t use pure strategies), then each player’s Nash equilibrium strategy is also his maximin strategy.
- Platforms: PC | PS4 | XBO |
- Developer: Do My Best
- Publisher:tinyBuild
- Release: August 30, 2016
More often than not, some of the best moments to be had in The Final Station are when not much is directly happening. That may sound like a self-defeating statement to make — and kick off this review more alarmingly — and said declaration its not without a degree of reason which I’ll get to. But given this is a stylized pixel art title as well as (if you’ll pardon my putting the blunt hat on briefly here) yet another survival-orientated, post-apocalyptic tale, there’s a discernible quality to the way developer Do My Best take precedent with more than just the abject focus on crafting and scavenging. It’s the kind of initial impression that underscores why I’ve found myself so invested in titles like Poncho or Mushroom 11 for more than just their gameplay. Games that care for scene they’re setting, the tone they carry.
Like those similarly low-key, indie titles, The Final Station is much more about alluding to a World gone awry and…well…horribly wrong, as opposed to out-right spelling it out. More prominently, it makes sure to sprinkle that with gameplay mechanics throughout to avoid this being some 8-bit alternate to a walking simulator and more a lingering bread-crumb trail in a World of conflicting natural and artificial beauty. The dynamic between managing a train — billed as possibly the last working locomotive in the World, not to add any pressure there — and leaving these somewhat comfy confines to look for supplies at the game’s many stops, does at least offer a proposition for variety in gameplay too, but when limiting your title to both two dimensions and a limited amount of pixels, does enjoyment end up factoring into each self-contained moment, as much as the immersive sort?
There’s no denying, for starters, The Final Station does a great job at dropping the player straight into the thick of things; never really offering an ounce of explanation as to either the troublesome amount of blacked-out, white eye dilated humanoids out to kill you, while immediately presenting the World of The Final Station as this desolate and hauntingly isolated state-of-play to begin with. Much as this may go against my tastes, there’s a Dark Souls-like philosophy to uncover, not so much with its visuals, but with both its drip-feed story-telling as well as its pacing. Throughout your ventures — in-between cross-country locomotive treks where, for example, a bomb might go off in the distance or something else equally evocative might comprise the game’s next curious background landscape your train runs parallel with — the meat of the game’s exposition is found in the likes of underground interiors and obtainable hand-written notes scattered throughout that shed light on proceedings before and during, what the game dubs, the First Visitation.
Like the Souls games, there’s no real definitive, concrete answer as to the nature or even string of events to why the World is the way it is. There’s something definitely sinister, man-made or otherwise, and in early proceedings the mystery and anxiety of the game’s industrialized, grey-scale aesthetic intrigues. A feat more commendable given the limiting art direction and the fact this is essentially a 2D side-scroller. Hence, it’s up to the player — if invested — to deduce for themselves the relevance of certain item placements and/or the dead bodies of former civilians that similarly dot themselves about the many stations the player will, in a linear fashion, be required to venture through in order to carry on. For the gameplay itself, The Final Station divides itself into two contrasting styles of play that cover, if not thoroughly or with much complex systems, both survival and a Souls-like stick-or-twist gambling of belongings.
During your train journey, your objective is to keep your passengers alive and this is accomplished by keeping both status bars, for hunger and health, away from empty. While the method of execution is by no means sophisticated — merely requiring you offer a unit of food or a med-kit you’ve [hopefully] acquired in the station segments (which comes next) beforehand. The train segment’s challenge, you could argue, isn’t so much down to the management and administering of supplies, but instead emerges by way of easy distraction in keeping your train in working order. It’s this factor where players will find they let their guard down the most and the deceivingly easy way in which players can go into panic mode feels like a clever and deliberate inclusion by the developers.
Such is the ease at which one can get so focused on passenger dialogue — it too providing tiny pieces of potential exposition — or using the carriage’s communication system to contact certain NPC’s (of which offers a possible, though weakly implemented, dialogue option) the difficulty feels almost the reverse of manufactured; player-made and perhaps reliant on the player’s curiosity about the tale slowly unravelling before them. No doubt Do My Best carve out a clever means of challenge here, though this doesn’t excuse the rather simple method of problem-solving that comes by either tapping a button or readjusting a value to return a once precarious status to all-green.
So it’s the latter half of the game’s core gameplay, in the stations themselves, that provide the better all-round delivery of challenge and enjoyment. If not, sadly, a means of decision-based punishment and consequence. With the primary objective in each case requiring you to find an access code to get past each station’s blocker, you’re provided with an opportunity to gather supplies and materials which you can then craft to make additional items as well as ammunition for the game’s series of weapons, of which include the more tactile handgun to powerful, multi-strike shotgun. Within these side-scrolling segments, building interiors are initially blacked out and offer no clue as to what, or potentially who, might or might not be lurking and it’s the games Souls-like influence again that comes strongly into play here.
There’s no doubting there’s a likeable dose of anxiety and anticipation to be felt as you weigh up the option on whether or not to open a particular door and the game does well in disfiguring a player’s time at a station from a once calm, confident stroll with plenty of bullets into a hectic flinching backtracking of cursor-aiming — now several bullets and a med-kit more than likely down from but five seconds ago. Anyone who’s found themselves forced into little tactical retreats in a game like Bloodborne will emphasise with the way these moments often play out. But the fact med-kits (or a lack of) carry over to the following train segments, require you to think several steps ahead and deduce what, in the long-term, is the best strategy to keep both yourself as well as your passengers safe.
The Final Station
What’s more, the fact you can find survivors hidden away in each station’s minimalistic labyrinths means that you can increase your load for a possible reward by way of each passenger [that lives] offering up extra money or materials upon arriving at dedicated settlements. It’s here where story-quests are obtained and you can stock up on supplies before heading out on the next part of your journey. Thus, the cycle repeats and while level design does deviate at points to offer some surprise twists here and there, most of The Final Station‘s structure follows this two-phase objective on survival and scavenging. In this instance,not onlydoes itupholds a decent risk:reward style of play but also makes player choice feel somewhat consequential (in the long-term) should it go wrong.
Sadly the game doesn’t advance this mechanic into a similarly short-term variety with say, death, should you unfortunately fall at the hands of one of but a multitude of varyingly apt zombie-like foes — meaning the benefits/rewards can often outweigh the risks involved. That said, the precarious nature to exploring each of the more deserted, corpse-littered stations and settlements provides a sufficient level of entertainment and intrigue to prevent the formula falling stale and it keeps each visited room feeling, tentatively, like your last. Above all else though, there’s a delightful curiosity to be found in each settlement’s derelict and decrepit layout as a former town/village/settlement. For an indie game of this scale and structure, it’s almost unfathomable how strongly the desaturated look and feel of the post-apocalyptic aesthetic comes across here.
Closing Comments:
There’s few complex systems in place to either discover or manage and while that may feel like a misstep, Do My Best live up to their namesake by setting the scene and giving even the most basic of pixel graphics feel like something far more grandiose and important in the wider scheme of things. The Final Station does a remarkable job at leaving a mark with its chosen aesthetic and subtle narrative — peaking one’s interest with this particular post-apocalyptic not-zombie infested World, it’ll be easily remembered above the mediocre allotment of survival titles out there at present. Overall, The Final Station is a welcome breath of fresh (if desolately murky) air and stands out through its interesting mix of platformer and survival mechanics — carving out a game that’s entertaining but cunning too.
Jordan Helm
The Final.station
The Final Station
4
Version Reviewed: PC