A game of Train of Thought in progress; a blue-yellow toy train chugs along a railorad, passing children's toys. A health bar is visible, and junction blinkers are on-screen.

Train of Thought

Train of Thought is a short, frenetic little game that I made to drag myself out of a creative rut. While out on a lovely afternoon walk, I was struck by the idea to literalize the metaphor of a train of thought, and make a game out of the concept of having to keep your thoughts focused while dealing with unmedicated ADHD. As such, The game features a chaotic amount of thought bubbles that will either distract or focus the player; they must use their mouse to throw the distractions off-screen, while making sure the train picks up the thought bubbles that help them focus. During all of this, they will also need to pay attention to the road ahead and take the right junction where needed, or their train will derail as it takes a turn it’s not supposed to!

Again, I have used an external soundtrack — courtesy of Feslyian Studios — and this time, some of the art assets are third-party as well: the lovely pixel art cars are made by VOiD1 Gaming! Some of the textual content has also been gathered from various ADHD subreddits.

You can play Train of Thought here.

Game Statistics

  • Release: 12-02-2023

  • Engine: Unity

  • Project Type: Solo

  • Commercial: No

  • Hosting Site: itch.io

The player losing Train of Thought by taking a wrong junction, the train sent flying across the screen and crashing into the display edge.

Project Trivia

  • Most of the text in the thought bubbles are my own musings — primarily references to hobbies or interests of mine.

  • This game is a part of the Video Game History Foundation’s collection! I happened to find out about them at roughly the same time that I finished this project, and I loved their mission, so I offered to send them the source code and assets — had to hash that out with the third-party asset creators I used, of course, but everyone was very much on board.

  • This was my first game with an accessibility feature! My dyslexic sibling gave me feedback on Hold the Picket! that the blocky, pixelated text was very hard to read, so in Train of Thought I added a toggle that lets you switch between the original font and a dyslexia-friendly one.

  • The little banners you see were designed for my first ever game project, a wave based “heal-’em'-up” set in my homebrew fantasy world of Irenthar. It’s sadly unfinished, but ah well, one day…

  • Create another full project from scratch; prove the first wasn’t a fluke

  • Create a game that conveys the chaotic, tumbled nature of trying to focus while dealing with unmedicated ADHD

  • Focus on holistic game design; make sure all aspects from sound to mechanics to UI support the core theme of the game

  • Experiment with using mouse functionality in games

Design Goals