Sand attack! Is Tony Hawk with Japanese Trains, a work by a train lover, a work by a train lover

David Jaumandreu and I were supposed to be doing an interview about his upcoming game Denshatack in a studio that looked like a train. As you can see from the video above, we'll get there eventually. But before shooting the video version, we chatted for my written work in a very different environment: a dungeon.

Jaumandreu was sitting on a baffling throne, like something you'd see in a king's palace, while I was sitting on a different kind of throne: a real toilet. There were fake handcuffs on the stone walls around us and bars on the windows. Behind us, through a sliding door, is the train studio we will use in 30 minutes.

I didn't have a clever way to turn Jaumandreu and my dungeon adventures into something about Denshattack!, or even a train. But Jaumandreu is passionate about the stupidity of our circumstances. He had every reason to be happy now: after all, he was in his favorite place in the world.

No, I don't mean dungeons. I'm talking about Japan.

Jaumandreu has traveled halfway around the world to promote his upcoming game: Denshattack! , which he described as “Tony Hawk meets Japanese Trains.” He led the development of the project as Studio Director of Undercoders, a company founded in Barcelona in 2005. It started out as a mobile development studio, eventually transitioning to DSi development and later to console development, such as Conga Master and Treasures of the Aegean. Although Jaumandreu said they collaborate with outside developers on things like music and animation when support is needed, the core team is only 12 people, even 20 years after its founding.

So what is a Barcelona studio doing, making a game specifically about Japanese trains? In short, Jaumandreu loves Japan and its train system. That's its strengths and weaknesses.

“The first time I came (to Japan) was in '98,” he told me from his throne. “I just came here to travel. My dad used to travel a lot, so I had the opportunity to follow him here and it fascinated me and I just wanted to come back again and again.”

Jaumandreu was 16 when he made his first trip—now decades older, he has returned to Japan almost every year since that first trip.

“There’s so much to like,” he continued. “When I came here, obviously it was because I was a kid. I loved Dragon Ball, I loved video games, you know? At the time, Japan was the biggest force in making video games. Nintendo, PlayStation, etc. But I went through this fascination and then became fascinated by the country itself. Its history, it's so interesting, its culture. Every time you learn more about it, there are more layers of interesting stuff to get to. The movies are great, the food is incredible. Pop culture. No, it’s a mixture of a lot of things, and every time you go deeper into the country, you find more interesting things. So my first time there was definitely Tokyo, Osaka, and Kyoto, and then you start exploring more of the countryside, and that’s where it started to attract me.”

Of course, Jaumandreu is particularly fond of Japan’s train system. On his first visit he took the subway, the Yamanote Line, which loops around Tokyo's largest area. At that time, there were no English voices on train intercoms in Japan, and there were no English words on signs, so he had to rely on a guide to navigate. “It felt like a big adventure,” he said, especially compared to Barcelona's trains, which are nice but not as technologically advanced. “The difference in the long term when I got here is it was like looking 20 years into the future and now we've reached that point, I think.”

Then Jaumandreu rode the shinkansen, the bullet train, and he was blown away. “It's incredibly fast and quiet at the same time, so it feels super calm and you're going really fast. I don't know, it feels a little disjointed. You're going incredibly fast and it doesn't move or shake or anything. It's a super smooth ride. Super comfortable.”

It is out of this love that Den Shattuck! was born. Jaumandreu said one day he was playing with a small toy train he owned and the idea started coming to him.

“You know, I was skating on the train. Like you're bored. I did this and that. I was like, 'Wow, this is so cool. We could make a game out of this.' I started thinking about it and thinking about how to translate that into gameplay. I used to skate, and I really loved it. The Tony Hawk game, I was like, 'How are you going to do this? How are you going to control this? So, yeah, I brought a train piece to work and started showing some moves to the team, and then I showed it to the rest of the team and they told me, 'They're shit. “'Are you crazy?' And (my colleague) was really fast in Unreal, and I think it took him a couple of days, and then he came out and said, 'There's gotta be a game here. It's super fun.'”

Sand attack! It has been in development for three years. It's visually inspired by Jet Set Radio, Hi-Fi Rush and Persona, with music composed by Sonic Mania's Tee Lopes. In it, you control a train like a skateboard, and landscapes, cities, and other landmarks are transformed into skate parks. Jaumandreu breaks down the gameplay into two parts: There's a “flow state” gameplay where you focus on getting from point A to point B, doing tricks and avoiding derailments along the way. Then there are missions where you can race against opponents, try to get a high score by performing tricks, or even fight bosses like giant mechas. And Dansha Tucker! Combine all this with a shounen anime story about finding family, rebellion, and making friends with rivals.

As we wrap up the interview and prepare to emerge from the dungeon and enter the train studio to record, I ask Jaumandreu one last key question. What is his favorite ekiben or train bento box?

He started saying his favorites were the ones that heated up automatically when you pulled out a little tab. But then he came up with a more appropriate answer: He loved the kids' meals because they came in a train-shaped box.

Sand attack! It is scheduled to release in Spring 2026 on PC, Xbox Series (including Game Pass), and PlayStation.

Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter at IGN. You can find her posts at BlueSky @duckvalentine.bsky.social. Have a story tip? Send it to [email protected].