Iron Roads News

[h2]Sandbox[/h2]

The headline feature for this update is sandbox mode. Rather than play on a map we have hand drawn, you get a page of options, and Iron Roads will generate a map with whatever parameters you choose. The scenarios in Iron Roads are quite directed by us, so this is an opportunity for you to remix the game in whatever way you prefer.



We’ll be updating and extending Sandbox mode in future updates, so we’d love to hear how it works out for you!

[h2]Hotkeys[/h2]

One of the greatest usability issues in the initial Early Access release was the lack of hotkeys. We’ve added them now. The list of all hotkeys can be found in the game's pause menu. If you feel that any are missing from this list, please let us know!



[h2]Minor changes[/h2]

We have made a number of more minor changes to fix bugs, clarify the UI, and adjust the balance

• After a lot of feedback that the Horseshoe Isle scenario was surprisingly hard, we’ve worked through it, and rebalanced many aspects
  
• One-way arrows have moved slightly to make two way tracks more readable on diagonals
  
• The space around Daters Rest in the Desert Dew scenario has been increased to allow more growth
  
• The Tithonus was a game breakingly good train, so it is now slower, more expensive and carries fewer passengers
  
• Futura was a little hard to unlock, so we’ve reduced the star unlock requirement of Futura from 5 to 2
  
• The new train screen shows a power icon next to any train that requires power to run
  
• The wording of carriage contracts has changed to describe exactly what needs to be carried
  
• The town status display (map version) shows what the town requires in the case production is stalled
  
• The formula showing what factory towns do is laid out better on the town screen
  
• Journey time tasks now show a jump-to button to connect them to the statistics on the town screen
  
• We’ve fixed a bug where the transport tasks only counted passengers who travelled solely between the listed towns, not passengers where part the journey was via those towns
  
• We fixed an issue with the cargo info screen where it would not close in some circumstances
  
• We fixed an issue where towns would be erroneously considered connected when a tunnel ran under a platform. This caused passengers to be generated when they shouldn’t have been
  
• We removed the errant "Show tutorial contracts for this chain" button that could show up in the research window
  
• Many tooltips and other UI elements have been updated for clarity
  

Thanks so much to all of you who have played the beta branch, and given feedback!

This is a tiny patch. There are no gameplay changes, it is just some updates to the March challenge!

Iron Roads is taking part in the Women's day 2025 Steam Sale. Due to release cooldown, we can't put Iron Roads on sale right away, but we'll do our best to do so by the end of the event!

We will be streaming during the event. We won't be able to monitor chat so that is disabled, but if you have any questions we monitor the forums regularly, or you can drop by our Discord.



Thanks to Wings for including us in this event!

We are starting the playtest of the sandbox mode for Iron Roads. If you are interested in trying it you can opt into the beta branch on Steam using the password ironroadstest. There are notes on how to access it on our website.

[h2]Sandbox[/h2]

The headline feature for this update is sandbox mode. Rather than play on a map we have hand drawn, you get a page of options, and Iron Roads will generate a map with whatever parameters you choose. The scenarios in Iron Roads are quite directed by us, so this is an opportunity for you to remix the game in whatever way you prefer.



We’d love to hear how it works out for you, or if there are options you are missing, so do please let us know your thoughts!

[h2]Hotkeys[/h2]

One of the greatest usability issues in the initial Early Access release was the lack of hotkeys. We’ve added them now. There isn’t currently a list of them in game (it will appear soon), so for now the full set of hotkeys is:

• ESC Toggle menu
  
• TAB Select mode
  
• W or Up Arrow Move map upwards
  
• A or Down Arrow Move map downwards
  
• S or Left Arrow Move map leftwards
  
• D or Right Arrow Move map rightwards
  
• Left Shift When held it speeds up map movement
  
• Q or Minus Zoom map out
  
• E or Plus Zoom map in
  
• 1 Pause
  
• 2 Run at normal speed
  
• 3 Run at 10x speed
  
• Space Toggle between current speed and pause
  
• R Build track
  
• F Build bridge
  
• C Build tunnel
  
• Z Build platform
  
• X Delete/refund construction
  
• T One-way tool
  
• G Non-stop tool
  
• V Clear orders
  

Again, if there are any missing hotkeys, or other issues you notice, please let us know!

[h2]Minor changes[/h2]

We have made a number of more minor changes to adjust the balance

• We’ve moved the one-way arrows on the tracks to make two way tracks more readable on diagonals
  
• The Tithonus was a game breakingly good train, so it is now slower, more expensive and carries fewer passengers
  
• After a great deal of feedback that the Horseshoe Isle scenario was surprisingly hard as the second scenario we’ve rebalanced many aspects of it
  
• Futura was a little hard to unlock, so we’ve reduced the star unlock requirement of Futura from 5 to 2
  

Thanks so much to all of you who have played Iron Roads and given feedback. There is no way we could get to it all in a single update, but we will be working through it over the course of Early Access!

We are still working on the month’s major update - sandbox mode - but as that is at least a week away, we are pushing this small patch to solve the problems with keyboard shortcuts for users who boot Iron Roads with an Input Method Editor enabled, for example those using Chinese text input methods.

Other minor changes in this patch:

• There is a fix for a bug that caused memory usage to grow over time
  
• We have fixed the routes board so that it no longer clips the info button of routes on the right hand side
  
• We have also updated the route displays so that error messages are no longer occluded by that info button!
  

Thanks to you all for your feedback, and we look forward to sharing the new sandbox mode with you soon!