Stillcraft / Apps / Night Train
People tell a stranger on a train what they never tell those closest to them. Night Train gives a couple that evening. The phone lies on the table between you and splits in two, each half turned to its reader, with two windows back to back in the middle. A polite conductor asks the questions, and they deepen through the evening, the night, a tunnel and the dawn. Stations with rules, fellow passengers who sit down for a while, a restaurant car. Free, no ads, no account, no internet permission.
Android 9.0+ · Free · No internet permission · English & Русский
Sitting face to face, the screen splits in two: the top half turned to the person opposite, the bottom half to you, and two windows back to back between them. Every card shows on both halves, with its buttons, so either of you can answer, skip or go on.
Each trip starts light and playful, turns personal at night and ends warm at dawn. The gradual, mutual openness follows Arthur Aron's study of how people grow close. Into the tunnel only if both hold a thumb down; otherwise the train goes round, and nobody asks why.
359 conductor's questions over 12 subjects, 96 from fellow passengers, 45 whistle-stop actions, 90 restaurant-car dilemmas, 32 follow-ups for "deeper" and an 18+ sleeping car that stays off unless you switch it on. No question comes back until its whole stage has been heard.
16 cities and 27 lines across eight landscapes, from pine forest and the coast to snowfields and city lights. Each is its own view from the window and tilts the conductor toward its subjects: the forest brings back childhood, the coast brings out dreams. Each trip leaves from where the last one arrived.
Nine stations with rules, from Still Water's ten seconds of silence to Crooked Lanes, where one answer is a secret lie. An old sailor, a fortune teller, a granny with pies, a silent monk who wants answers without words, the ticket inspector's five-second rapid fire. Whistle-stops and a restaurant car where you both show one finger or two.
Say out loud what the other will answer: a hit punches a hole in the ticket, a miss is something new about the person opposite. The ticket book shows whether you're getting better at it, John Gottman's "love maps". Notes wait folded in the compartment until the next boarding, and a postcard you kept comes back a month later: the same train.
| Station | The rule |
|---|---|
| Mirror Halt | Answer as the person opposite would. Then they put you right. |
| Three Words | Three words first, exactly three. Then the whole story. |
| Ten Summers | First as you would have answered at ten, then as now. |
| Hush | Answer in a whisper, leaning closer. |
| Crossing | Every question goes to both of you, one after the other. |
| Long Look | Hold each other's eyes while you answer. |
| Handfast | Hold hands for the whole stretch. |
| Still Water | Ten seconds of silence before each answer. |
| Crooked Lanes | One answer on the stretch is a secret lie. Find it at the end. |
JDK 17+ (Android Studio's bundled JBR works) and the Android SDK. The landscapes, the window, the map and the tickets are drawn on a Compose canvas and the wheels are synthesised, nothing else to install.
git clone https://github.com/bigdevwhale/night-train.git cd night-train ./gradlew testDebugUnitTest # the deck, the trip planner, the railway, backups ./gradlew assembleDebug # app.nighttrain.dev, installs next to a release ./gradlew assembleDebug -Pdemo # app.nighttrain.demo, four made-up months of trips ./gradlew assembleDebug -Pdemo -Pshots # app.nighttrain.shots, the window holds still
Because people tell a fellow traveller what they never tell those closest to them. The longer two people are together, the more they assume they already know each other; for one evening the train makes you strangers again.
Pull the emergency brake and the card is skipped without a word. Either of you can take the train round the tunnel, no reason needed, and the 18+ sleeping car is off unless you switch it on.
Three trains: the Local takes about 25 minutes, the Express about an hour, and the Night train the whole evening.
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