Iron Roads News

This is a pre-recorded devs play stream. We aren't able to monitor chat, but we are active in the forums, so if you have any questions, drop by!

We anticipate that we’ll be in Early Access for a couple of years, but are committed to providing regular, monthly updates based on feedback. These are the updates we have planned right now but note that despite the timeline view, they are not in any particular order.

This time next week we should be pressing Steam’s big green button to ship Iron Roads out to Early Access!

To that end we have been pushing bug fixes quite rapidly these last few weeks, and we’ve been a little slow posting patch notes

• We’ve reworked the chooser screen. All three play modes for a scenario are grouped in the same place
  
• Speaking of which, the third mode is Free play mode. You get infinite resources, no contracts or goals, so you can build whatever you wish
  
• Technology unlocks are permanent now, so once you’ve researched power once you never need do it again!
  

And of course we’ve fixed a lot of bugs

• The cargo screen no longer shows the count of all types of cargo waiting at a stop, just the selected cargo
  
• Trains too long for a station, that magic flip while their tail end is on a corner, no longer leave the station in a bad state that blocks other trains
  
• Dragging purchase land no longer draws whatever the last selected construction mode was
  
• It no longer crashes when you try to click purchase countryside tiles
  
• The required tools are no longer locked in the tutorial
  
• When the collected reward is zero, the collect button now displays as Dismiss rather than Collect 0
• The jump to button jumps to the correct stop when there are multiple notifications shown at once
  
• Click delete now deletes the entire bridge or tunnel and no longer leaves it in a bad state
  
• We’ve fixed a number of bugs with the Chinese translation, and waypoints now change language immediately the language is changed
  
• The Mole Miner’s rest contracts are not shown in the tutorial before power is researched
  
• The edit train window now returns to the correct service after clicking confirm
  
• We’ve fixed the zoom scale change for hi dpi screens
  

Thanks to everyone for all your feedback! Now that we are so close to release we’ll be shutting down the Playtest build in the next few days. We have aligned the demo build with the playtest build, so you can swap to that and continue playing, it’ll load your save games with no issue!

[h3]Removing money from Iron Roads[/h3]

This update is a big shift for Iron Roads. We’ve stripped out the money system and replaced it with track, platform and train tokens. We’ve always envisioned Iron Roads as more of a strategy game rather than detailed simulation, and this change shifts it a little further in the game direction. One track token gives you one tile of track, connecting the currency with its in-game effect more clearly. That in turn makes it easier for us to balance challenges in the game.

An associated change is that tokens are a reward for town growth. Towns grow as they handle more and more passengers, so the overall effect is that you get more resources as a reward for using the ones you have more effectively. We hope this encourages people to lay track better rather than just lay more track!



[h3]Other changes[/h3]

• It is now free to buy tiles back from a town. But this is not without cost, as doing so will undo one tile's worth of growth, and the town will generate fewer passengers
  
• The old power, cement and aluminium resources have been “tokenified” as well to fit with the new style
  
• Fix for bug where track purchase would double charge when drawing over existing track
  

[h3]Home screen change[/h3]

We've also promoted the timed challenge to the front screen of Iron Roads. It works well with the new system, and it has always been one of our favourite ways of playing, so it has been moved to a prime spot on the front page!

(NB the quality of life fixes from this update will arrive in the demo version in the near future)

0.4.5 Adds a new scenario, the snow-capped Futura, to the playtest. It introduces the vac-train, very slow on the surface, and very fast through tunnels. Futura also adds a new cargo-hauling chain to Iron Roads.

There are also a few gameplay changes

• Towns no longer grow unless the town badge is green. This rewards you for keeping passengers happy, and stops runaway growth when you are not on top of the traffic already produced by the town
  
• All scenarios have star targets to provide a sense of completion to that scenario (3 stars being the maximum). Eventually the star status will apply globally across multiple plays of the same level, be linked to Steam achievements, and show on the chooser screen
  
• There is an option to pay to expand a town, with the cost increasing each time you do so. With the increased use of cargo, sometimes you run short of workers, and this allows you an occasional boost to your workers
  

Some quality of life changes

• If you draw track over water, the game will automatically substitute a bridge. Similarly it will swap to a tunnel under towns
  
• There are multiple columns of stops when adding to a route
  
• The train window profit display is clearer
  
• The town info window has been reformatted for clarity
  
• There is an option to hide train details in the buy screen
  
• The service window displays profit and occupancy statistics so you know which lines are full and making money
  
• A warning is shown on the routes screen when a train is waiting for a route to be completed
  
• We added an option to run the game in the background. This defaults to ‘off’, to avoid wasting battery
  
• There are new tutorial screens to notify players about orders the first time they encounter stuck trains
  

And we fixed

• A bug where the maintenance record didn’t show non-spike currencies
  
• An issue where disconnected towns were affecting the town growth cooldown
  
• The routefinder to choose the shortest option when there are two routes with the same number of stops to a destination, and one is significantly longer than the other