Dutch-Egyptian independent developer Rami Ismail is returning to active game development after several years focused on advocacy, consulting and support for other creators. A new interview published on November 3 looks at what he learned while stepping back into production. His upcoming project, Australia Did It: End-of-the-World Railway Defense Business, is scheduled to launch on PC through Steam on November 10, bringing a personal comeback story just days before release.
The game asks players to defend a cargo train crossing a monster-filled, dried-up seabed after a mysterious disaster. At each station, players position a small crew of mercenaries and prepare for the next attack. Once the train moves, battles continue in an on-rail auto-battle sequence. It mixes turn-based planning with tower-defense ideas and unit merging, so the challenge is not only choosing strong fighters but also deciding when to combine them.
The publisher says the game includes more than 30 unit types and over 1,500 possible merge combinations. Those figures describe the advertised design, not a promise that every combination will be equally useful. Between fights, reward cards can change a run’s direction and encourage players to try a different strategy. The result sounds like a compact tactical game built around experimentation: plan at the station, then see how that plan holds up once the train is rolling.
Australia Did It is published by Dutch indie label Mystic Forge and co-developed by Aesthetician Labs and Colombia’s Dreams Uncorporated, alongside Ismail’s creative direction. Ismail is known for earlier indie games including Nuclear Throne and Ridiculous Fishing, and he described the project as a chance to combine strategy, tower defense and merging mechanics. The developers have also made a free demo available on Steam, allowing players to try the idea before launch.
A return to making games is a notable change for a developer who has spent years helping the wider indie community. Australia Did It also illustrates how an independent project can bring together a designer, a publisher and specialist co-development teams across countries. Whether the many unit combinations produce satisfying decisions will become clearer when the full game arrives. For now, the demo offers a practical way to judge the unusual railway-defense premise ahead of its November 10 release.
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