Iron Roads News

This update feels like we have taken the game apart and put it all back together again. One big change is that towns now have badges that show how happy the passengers are with their train service. We hope this acts as another motivator (alongside contracts) for players to design increasingly efficient networks. As always we’d love to hear your thoughts on how this has gone!

The Forgotten Valley scenario in the demo has also been greatly expanded. The map is 4x the size of the original, unlocking in 3 stages as you complete contracts. There are also now some cargo chains in that scenario. For example certain trains now require power, for which you’ll need to haul fuel to the power station on the new eastern landmass.

From this version on, you can play in Chinese, both Traditional and Simplified. Thanks to our Chinese publisher, Hawthorn games, for making that happen!

On top of that there are many smaller changes

🔬 Certain features are now researchable, and you need to unlock them as you play
🪟 New town, train and route windows with far more data available on them
🧑‍🏫 The tutorial has been merged with Forgotten Valley so you play on once the tutorial is over
⚠️ Clearer, and hopefully less annoying, messages when trains are stuck or platforms are too short
🐛 Many bugfixes, including

• Services that carry no trains are now ignored by the routefinder
  
• Unstoppable scrolling on boot should be fixed
  
• We fixed a surprising number of bugs with the continue button
  
• The game window’s title and icon are set
  
• The escape key on the title screen works the same as it does elsewhere in the game
  
• There is a notice when there are unselected contracts and the window is open
  
• A number of crash fixes, and a fix for the layout on the menu screen
  

Thanks to you all for your feedback, but for this update I’d particularly like to thank the playtesters who played early (and really rather rough) versions of these changes and politely nudged us in a (hopefully) better direction!

Also, with this update we've enabled Steam's new demo store page, so if you enjoyed it, please review!

We'll be streaming a prerecorded developer plays stream for the Planes, Trains and Automobiles fest. As we can't monitor chat at all times, we'll disable it, but we are always active in the forums, so please post there if you have any questions

A prerecorded developer plays stream. We won't be monitoring chat, but please post in our forums if you have any questions

A prerecorded developer plays stream. We won't be monitoring chat, but please post in our forums if you have any questions

A large number of bugfixes and small changes to get ready for expanding the playtest. We spent some time finessing the scenario contracts, making sure they still make sense in light of various updates and balancing changes we have made in recent weeks. We created various new contracts, minor changes to the map layouts, and rethought the Desert Dew scenario to includes passenger contracts alongside cargo.

The new Desert Dew scenario isn’t in the demo, but we are going to start a smaller, more focussed playtest of the non-demo content, so please get in touch if you are interested in trying that!

Other changes include:

• Removed minimap that showed towns in route screen
  
• Added stop names to the ‘remove’ buttons
  
• New game window now has a text background to make it easier to read
  
• Added new art for challenge mode menu screen
  
• Single add/remove/max button on edit train
  
• Fixed the “Bermuda triangle” issue with waypoints where trains would mysteriously disappear as they pass through
  
• Fixed a bug where unstraightened trains would incorrectly set the occupancy flag on track and not allow any further trains in
  
• Renamed trains
  
• Added new trains (not in demo)
  
• Further performance work for busy maps