Is this the first Blue Prince-like? At the Best Indie Games Summer Showcase 2026, Japan-based indie devs Studio 909 announced Quiet Express: Cabin 909.
Kazuhide Oka, the developer behind Japanese text-based adventures including Moonless Moon, Girls Made Pudding and Natsuno Kanata (Beyond the Summer), is the director behind Studio 909.
In Quiet Express: Cabin 909, you take a ride on the titular Quiet Express. It’s a seven-day journey to reach your destination, but on the seventh day, everyone dies in a trainwreck. Yet you wake up again from that and start the seven-day journey, again.
You’ll always start at the caboose of the train, making your way to the front locomotive. But every time you open the door to the next carriage, a pick-one-of-three random choice of car appears. It can range to a passenger car to a cargo car. It’s all random. But a specific order of cars may be required to access or find what you need. There are also items that can be found and use to open secret passages.
You’re also on the hunt of the mysterious Cabin 909 that some say don’t even exist.
If you haven’t picked it up yet, Quiet Express: Cabin 909 is affectionately riffing on the blueprint Blue Prince set forth, the idea of a roguelike/roguelite maze puzzler where strategically laying out the random set of rooms are equally engaging in roguelite elements and traditional adventure games with puzzle-solving. The artstyle and the first-person movement is also evocative of Dogubomb’s debut work.
This is basically Blue Prince on rails, as in it’s on a train and not a criticism. It will be interesting to see how Quiet Express: Cabin 909 can replicate the same magic its big inspo had while only have one linear path to take every loop.
Quiet Express: Cabin 909 is also inspired by the excellent Road 96. There are passengers you will encounter in some of the random cars on the train, and you might have the influence to “change their tomorrows just a little bit” and in turn, aid you uncover the mystery at the heart of the game.
Quiet Express: Cabin 909 is targeting to release in 2027 on PC (Steam).