Somewhere in Japan, a gamer opened Steam, downloaded a train simulation game, and was convinced it came from a major studio. The visuals were too detailed. The railway too accurate. The atmosphere too authentically Japanese. Then they looked up the developer: Novatetsu Games — a one-man operation based in Indonesia.

That reaction became a pattern. Within days of its May 25, 2026 launch, Running Train | 走ル列車! was sitting at "Extremely Positive" on Steam with 98% approval from 596 reviews — many of them written in Japanese.

What is Running Train | 走ル列車?

Running Train | 走ル列車! is a 3DCG train simulation game developed by Rizky Nova under the studio name Novatetsu Games, released on Steam on May 25, 2026. Players operate trains across more than 40 kilometers of Japanese rural railway routes, navigating realistic countryside and coastal scenery from the crew's cabin. The game is available globally on PC via Steam. Pricing details are listed on the game's official Steam page.

Who Made This Game ?

Rizky Nova is an Indonesian solo developer working under the Novatetsu Games label. He built the entire game — the 3D models, environments, train physics, and visual systems — essentially by himself. That's the detail that kept showing up in player comments: the scale of the work felt impossible for one person.

Indonesian game media outlet kulturdomestik picked up the story on Instagram, where the post gathered over 7,150 likes. Their caption noted that many Japanese players praised the graphics, the sense of atmosphere, and the overall presentation quality — describing it as the kind of game you'd expect from a large studio.

Why Are Japanese Gamers Impressed?

Japan has its own deeply established train simulation genre — franchises like Densha de Go! have decades of history. For an Indonesian developer to enter that space, earn the respect of Japanese players, and get covered by Japanese gaming publication 電ファミニコゲーマー (Den Famini Cogamer) is genuinely unusual.

The game includes an automatic recording feature, letting players casually replay scenic coastal and rural routes — a detail that clearly resonated with train enthusiasts looking for a meditative, sightseeing-style experience rather than a hardcore simulation.

The Counterintuitive Part

Here's the detail worth sitting with: the country that arguably invented the modern train simulation genre — Japan — is now praising a train game made by someone from a country where trains are mostly associated with commuter chaos. Rizky Nova didn't grow up riding quiet rural Japanese railways. He built them from research, reference materials, and sheer craft.

It's the kind of story the Indonesian game development community needed — not a breakout mobile title, not a clone, but a simulation game about Japanese culture that Japanese people actually play and recommend.