Steam’s Most Inventive New Puzzle Game Puts A Weirdly Satisfying Twist On Dialogue

There are plenty of ways to make the typical video game conversation more interesting. The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion has its skill-based persuasion wheel, for example, and games like Goodbye Volcano High and Lost Records: Bloom & Rage turn dialogue choices into timed challenges. But as far as I know, only one game is out there exploring the narrative potential of the classic puzzler Peggle, and it has a free PC demo out now.

Developer Seed by Seed first announced its upcoming game Jump the Track in February, and its first demo launched on May 1 as part of the LudoNarraCon narrative game festival on Steam. Part visual novel, part arcade game, Jump the Track stars Sam, a gig worker who inadvertently gets caught up in a battle against the cops and corporations wrecking his neighborhood. While its story may touch on some serious topics, it’s ultimately a comedy, and its sense of humor can be seen in its unique dialogue system.

Throughout Jump the Track’s story, players can choose how Sam responds, such as modifying his tone when answering a question, or whether he tries to negotiate or run away from a tense situation. Not every choice is available automatically, though, which is where the game’s arcade side comes in. Whenever a choice arises, Jump the Track switches to a pachinko board, with certain pegs representing different emotions or actions. A given board might have colored pegs representing diplomacy, aggression, and deception scattered around with unmarked ones. To unlock a dialogue option, you need to hit all the pegs associated with that emotion before running out of balls. Do really well at the pachinko minigame and you’ll have lots of options when you return to your conversation, but do poorly and you may be stuck with a less desirable default answer.

Jump the Track’s focus is on its narrative, so even if you can’t get a high score to save your life, you won’t be locked out of reaching the next chapter. As a game tutorial explains, the story continues no matter how well you do at the pachinko portion, and failing might lead to a funnier outcome. If you manage to crush it at the minigame, though, you could unlock some wild alternate routes.

The demo for Jump the Track is quite short, lasting only around 15 minutes. That leaves a lot up in the air about how its unique approach to dialogue will hold up in the long run, but what’s on display is already promising. The game’s dialogue is already funny and full of character, and Sam’s quest to retrieve a stolen cell phone and defraud a casino in the demo leaves me wanting to see where the rest of the adventure goes. Seed by Seed’s last game, Baladins, was full of fantastic hand-drawn art, with particularly impressive character designs, and the artwork in Jump the Track is even more impressive, this time with fantastic cyberpunk-adjacent backgrounds and action scenes that look like comic book splash pages. With a catchy soundtrack to pull it all together, Jump the Track looks like it has far more to it than just an intriguingly silly premise.

I love a game that takes the kind of casual puzzle solving of something you might play on your phone while waiting for the bus and turns it into something bigger. Twists on match-3 games and retro classics have been among my favorite games of the past few years, and the best of them manage to marry their gameplay with the story’s themes, no matter how disparate they may seem. Pachinko is a game of both skill and luck, making it an oddly fitting embodiment of the way someone like Sam might have to scrape by on the margins, battling the forces keeping his neighborhood down while still trying to make a living. However his story pans out, Jump the Track has piqued my attention.

Jump the Track will launch on PC in 2025. A free demo is available now on Steam and Itch.io.