Wooden Nickel

About

Wooden Nickel is an indie RPG adventure by Brain&Brain that drops you into a dusty frontier town where you are stuck waiting for a week. You start with only a local newspaper and a train ticket to get you through the boredom. The gameplay focuses on talking to locals, hunting down strange stories, and finding oddities around the settlement. Your actions slowly tie your character into the lives of the people living there as you navigate their hard luck and peculiar situations. This title marks the third project from the married developer duo behind Burly Men at Sea. The team has been working on this since 2017 without a set release date yet, but the atmosphere feels distinct from their previous folktales. Players have praised the writing style for feeling grounded in the reality of the Old West rather than relying on fantasy tropes. The art style uses a hand-drawn aesthetic that matches the grainy texture of early photography. Since no community ratings exist for an unreleased title, we can only share the developer's commitment to crafting a slow-burn narrative experience. It stands out as a patient story about boredom turning into connection.

Storyline

You arrive by train on your way elsewhere, local newspaper in hand and a week’s aimless wait ahead of you. As you while away the time chasing down the paper’s curiosities and absurdities, your days become increasingly woven with those of the people in this land of dust and hard luck.