By conventional standards, tricking and executing mid-air flips are reserved for smaller, more streamlined bodies: skateboarding, mountain biking, skiing, freerunning, and the like. But normalcy is overrated sometimes, and embracing quirkiness makes room for the most absurd of fantasies to come true, which injects a fresh breath of air into the ever-growing video game space.
Denshattack!, hailing from Barcelona indie outfit Undercoders and published by Fireshine Games, isn’t afraid to go wild. Set in a colourful Japanese dystopia (“densha” means train in Japanese), the upcoming title invites players to flip, trick, and grind their train to outmatch rival gangs, wreck a shady megacorp, and take back the tracks. It’s Jet Set Radio and Sonic the Hedgehog meet Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, with adrenaline fuel for miles, and we’re all aboard this train ride!.
The sense of adventure and exhilaration was constantly thrumming in the veins during a brief 15-minute preview at the recent Tokyo Game Show 2025, spanning two tutorial sequences – one focusing on basic controls, including honking (unabashedly a personal favourite), jumping, and rail-hopping, and the other on tricking techniques – and a full run that combines the two with a list of objectives.
It doesn’t take long to build the muscle memory for navigating the tracks, but be prepared to be humbled – much like the Sonic the Hedgehog titles, the train goes a lot faster than it looks head-on, and looking ahead to scan for obstacles along the way is key to avoiding collisions. Then, there are also split pathways that call for split-second decision-making, further kicking the player’s reflexes into overdrive, and opening up a secondary route with different sights until the tracks align again at a later juncture.
Tricking is another beast altogether. In addition to accelerating, or at times, slowing down, steering with the joystick and hitting the sweet spot, indicated in green, during sharp turns to maintain control and gain a speed boost, Denshattack! engages the jump button and joystick rotation for stunt execution, which can be mechanically challenging under duress, especially since the controls demand precision. Even so, failure never once led to frustration or despair – a hallmark of true fun – and instead, only served to feed the competitive spirit.
And boy, was the persistence rewarding. When the flow clicks in place, every manoeuvre, from simple swerves to complex mid-air combos, is satisfying to witness, with a smooth, responsive touch to their movement, barring the occasional lack of input registration. The kinetic dynamism bleeds into the game’s aesthetics, too, where its vibrant environments, bright colours, and cel-shaded visuals are highly evocative of Jet Set Radio and the Persona series.
It’s impossible to take in the sights properly when hurtling at a breakneck speed, but the stylings come through in other ways, such as the anime cutscenes that unfold between stages or action set pieces. For all that it revels in chaos, there’s also a grounded quality to Denshattack!, which pulls from real-world cultural and geographical influences. As lead designer David Jaumandreu shares in a quick chat following the preview, the game’s world is modelled after the landscapes in Japan, from Kyushu to Hokkaido, that the team visited to ensure authenticity, as well as the country’s railway system.
Meanwhile, anime runs thick in its DNA. Aligning with the “shonen” storyline, a genre of Japanese manga and animated works aimed at a young male audience and characterised by action-filled plots, the high-energy platformer taps into the likes of Naruto and JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure, with an upbeat score rounding out the preview experience.
A mere 15 minutes did little to quench the need for speed, proving effective at whetting the appetite for more. When Denshattack! eventually makes its stop, around 50 levels and different race types will be available, though hopefully, with a gentler learning curve and more streamlined user interface elements. For now, high-strung fun is shaping up to be a guarantee, instead of a train wreck.
Denshattack! speeds onto the Xbox Series X|S, PS5, and Steam in 2026.
Si Jia is a casual geek at heart – or as casual as someone with Sephiroth’s theme on her Spotify playlist can get. A fan of movies, games, and Japanese culture, Si Jia’s greatest weakness is the Steam Summer Sale. Or any Steam sale, really.
Yonk
Kevin Low
