Fear Equation
Release date: Jan 15, 2016
Developers: Screwfly Studios
Publishers: Screwfly Studios
Genres: Indie, RPG, Simulation, Strategy
Categories: Single-player, Steam Achievements, Steam Trading Cards, Family Sharing
Supported languages: English

The world is covered in fog. Most who enter the fog disappear, and those who survive say it brings their nightmares to life. No-one knows where it came from, but they all have ideas. Some say it's an experiment gone wrong, others believe it's divine judgement. And you? All you know is that the Sun is rumoured to shine just over the horizon. You are The Engineer. You have designed the perfect system: a train, sealed off from the fog, ready to rescue survivors and take them to salvation. If only they'd listen... Fear Equation is a turn-based strategy with rogue-like elements where you must take control of a modified freight train in an end-of-the-world scenario. The landscape has been overrun by a thick, deadly fog that manifests the nightmares of those inside it. Your survival depends on tactical planning and careful resource management. As the Engineer, you'll need to rescue survivors, analyse their dreams and build defenses to protect them from their own imaginations. Complicating matters, passengers have their own theories as to how the fog was created and will form inter-carriage factions based on their beliefs. Every game is unique and you can customise your Engineer to dramatically change how the game is played. Your passengers bring their nightmares with them. When the fog attacks, it will make their worst fears come alive. Read your passengers’ dream logs to help prepare defenses. The train needs resources and there's only one way to get them: send your passengers back out into the fog. Listen to radio broadcasts for hints and equip your scavengers well. But don’t stay too long because they’ll disappear into the fog. Passengers will group into four factions based on where they think the fog came from. Different factions are associated with different nightmares, skills and concerns. You’ll need to maximise their talents, handle their disputes and meet their needs. Create your own Engineer with special modifiers - both good and bad - that determine your individual train's starting conditions, overall difficulty and the different courses the game can take. Personalise your Engineer further by importing photos of yourself (or others) for use with your character. Populate your train with passengers of your own design using the custom passenger creator. Name, vital statistics, occupation, factional tendencies and influence can all be modified. As with Engineer customisation, you can import photos from outside the game to give each passenger a life of their own. Explore a richly detailed 3D cabin and interact with computers, train controls, maps and consoles. All interaction points feature an in-game manual so you’ll never get lost. With squabbling passengers, limited resources and wandering foes including the cult-like 'Fearless' and powerful military, the fog might be the least of your concerns... About Screwfly Studios We're a two-man developer based in Australia, dedicated to creating deep, innovative strategy games for PC. Fear Equation is Screwfly's third title; its previous games Zafehouse: Diaries and Deadnaut are also available on Steam.

Press reviews: “It works brilliantly as a train simulator. It's a great roguelike. It's a fantastic real-time strategic action game. This game is better at multiple genres than many games dedicated to just one genre are. I cannot recommend this highly enough.” Many A True Nerd “Fear Equation is easy to understand from a mechanical point of view but very hard to master, a video game that can evoke a lot of ideas with a few screens and plenty of data while giving players the freedom to solve challenges via trial and error.” Softpedia 

Notes: Fear Equation features mature content in the form of text descriptions of combat, and uncommon, brief scenes containing abstract, nightmare elements.