The Great Train Robbery is a heist planner set in a small Wild West town. A train full of gold is about to pass through, and you have $4,000 to put together a gang that can stop it. You never steer anyone during the robbery. Instead you hire people, buy their gear, write their orders in advance, then sit back and watch your plan succeed or fall apart. Ondřej Žára made it for the 2026 Seven Day Roguelike Challenge.
How to Play The Great Train Robbery
Start in the saloon, where every townsperson has a price. Some names hint at a trait: “the Sick” has less health, “Speedy” moves faster, and “Expensive” costs more. Next, visit the general store. It sells horses, revolvers, rifles, a sniper rifle, a rocket launcher and dynamite. Each person can carry one weapon and one horse.
The hotel is where the real planning happens. Give every gang member a starting building and a list of tasks. Some buildings let you walk in and out. Others only give roof access, which adds range and keeps you safe from fists but traps you up there.
When the train arrives, shoot a wagon until it breaks loose. Bags of gold spill out, and so do armed guards. Shooting the locomotive slows the train down. The heist ends once your party is gone or there is nothing left to do, and your score is shown right away.
The Great Train Robbery Controls
| Action | Keyboard |
|---|---|
| Continue past the intro / start the game | Enter |
| Edit the random seed on the intro screen | E |
| Open the town map, saloon, store, hotel or start screen | M, O, G, T, K |
| Show the help text | ? |
| Pick a person, item, location or task from a list | Number keys 1 to 0 |
| Hire or fire (saloon), purchase or sell (store) | H / F, P / S |
| Set location, add task, remove task (hotel) | L, A, R |
| Move the selected task up or down the list | Up / Down arrows |
| Go back to the party list | B |
| Confirm or cancel a dialog | Enter / Escape |
| Pause or resume the heist (abort while paused) | Space (then A to abort) |
| After the heist - retry, restart with a new crew, new town | 1, 3, 5 |
Tips and Strategies
- Order tasks from specific to general. A person always runs the first task that is possible. Put “Attack train guards” above “Attack wagons with gold” so guards get handled once they appear.
- Always add a collect task. Without “Collect gold looted from the train,” nobody picks up the bags, and an empty-handed heist scores zero.
- Keep collectors off the roofs. Roof snipers get bonus range but can never climb down to grab gold, so pair them with someone on the ground.
- Arm everyone. Without a weapon, a gang member can only punch for 1 damage, while guards shoot from 3 tiles away.
- Count the split. The score is divided by your party size, dead members included, so one extra hire must earn their share.
- Use pause to read the log. Press Space during the action to see who shot what before deciding on your next retry.
Features
- A new town every game, built from a random seed you can view and edit on the intro screen.
- Retry with the same plan to tweak task order without hiring all over again.
- Townsfolk with traits such as tough, sick, cheap, speedy or slow.
- A running log that reports each shot, kill and escape as it happens.
Tested and updated:
