Iron Roads News

0.5.0 - Removing money from Iron Roads

[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!

0.4.5 update - A new scenario for the playtest

(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

Developer plays stream

This is a pre-recorded developer plays stream. We can't monitor the chat all the time so it is disabled, but if you have any questions we are active in the forums, so please ask there!

Complex 2D train management sim Iron Roads hits Early Access in January 2025

With a Demo and Steam Playtest available, Iron Roads from Cowleyfornia Studios is a top-down 2D train management game that's going to enter Early Access next year.

Read the full article here: https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2024/10/complex-2d-train-management-sim-iron-roads-hits-early-access-in-january-2025

0.4.3 Patch notes

0.4.3 fixes a few bugs. Most notably the bug that caused trains to sometimes stop too early at a platform, and erroneously throwing a warning about the platform being too short. We’ve had this bug so long now I’ll almost miss it. However it is now confined to the archives of Iron Roads’ history, as are:

Various formatting problems with town badges that are part of cargo chains
Finished resources that incorrectly counted to the waiting times at a town
The exploit of repeatedly building and selling stations that could lead to infinite funds
The crash that was occasionally caused by the title screen music starting
The formatting of waiting passenger counts where it would sometimes erroneously show 99+ in the detailed display
Quite a few other crashes…

Other changes we've made:

Added a count of waiting passengers to the destinations table on the town screen
Starting Forgotten Valley scenario no longer starts the tutorial
Your progress through the contracts is shown on the mini display