Video games can take years to develop, even with a large studio involved, but indie game jams have been coaxing games out of developers in much shorter time spans — sometimes in just hours.

Train Jam attendees, for example, have as long as it takes Amtrak’s California Zephyr to make it from Chicago’s Union Station to Emeryville, California to make a video game from scratch. The journey is an estimated 52 hours, but this year a snowstorm in Nevada delayed the train by two hours. It’s a nightmare for a passenger with a destination in mind, but turned out to be a godsend for developers cramming in their final hours to finish their projects.

Watch VICE News riding on Train Jam 2018

Train Jam sets itself apart from other indie game jams, and not just because it’s on a train. There’s no Wi-Fi, and traveling through remote locations like the Colorado Rockys means there’s often no cell reception either — which means no Google to quickly solve a programing question.

VICE News met two developers, Rasheed Abueideh, from Palestine, and Alex Clay, from Syria, who teamed up to make a video game about fake news.

A version of this segment originally aired on Tuesday, March 27, 2018 on VICE News Tonight on HBO.