All Aboard! The Train Defense Express News

All Aboard! The Train Defense Express goes into Early Access today! The goal is to allow people who want to play the full game to start playing now while continuing to add important features, maintenance, and fixes to the game. The planned release date is the Steam summer sale, June 26, 2025.

There will be a content patch every 3 weeks with the following planned additions (not in any order):

• Relic system: Relics are permanent artifacts which can affect the battle in minor or major ways. They will drop from bosses. First, the system needs to be created; then, I need to create all of the relics. I plan to have a minimum of 50 relics at release and possibly more post-version 1.0.
  
• More enemies: At 1,000% scaling, a new enemy type will appear, replacing the old enemy types.
  
• Endless Survival - Hard mode: Enemy scaling will increase more quickly and bosses will receive bonus health to make them harder to kill. This mode will really test you; I wonder if anyone will be able to go past 1 hour?
  
• Collections Menu - A new main menu item where you can view your best time, best score, and highest number of enemies destroyed, as well as achievements collected.
  
• New achievements
  
• New carriages
  
• New bosses
  
• New power-ups
  
• Of course, bug fixes and feedback
  

With a new patch every 3 weeks until the June 26 release date, that means there will be a total of 5 new major patches (including the release day patch) after this one. There will no doubt be some post-release content, too, so look forward to that!

Anyway, with that out of the way, let's discuss some of the new things in this patch.

• New "Gravity Gun" carriage (Very Rare) - Suck enemies into the center of a gravity well and slow them down, making them juicy Area of Effect targets. Probably the strongest crowd control tower yet!
  
• New "Boomerang" carriage (Uncommon) - Launches a boomerang which penetrates targets and then returns back to its sender. If it hits 3 targets, it explodes!
  
• The game now tracks your score. You get score from destroying enemies, from upgrading carriages, from collecting power-ups, and collecting gems. Your score is increased by how high the current enemy scaling value is, and it's increased way more by every carriage that you have above 30. NOTE: The game tracks your best time, best score, and highest number of kills, but it does not show it yet.
• The "Number of Carriages" label now shows how much stronger enemies get with your current number of carriages. Be careful about going above 35 carriages!
  
• New upgrade - Attack Speed - Increase the attack speed of all towers.
  
• New upgrade - Power-up Frequency - Increase how often power-ups drop.
  
• New upgrade - Power-up Duration - Increase how long power-ups last.
  
• New upgrade - Stealth - Enemies have a % chance to miss their attacks on the Infinite Power Generator.
  
• New upgrade - Pity - Adds a chance of guaranteed progression towards a carriage upgrade.
  

• Werebear - Slightly reduced the attack speed and movement speed.
  

• Fixed a bug that caused debuffs to not last as long as they should, and also caused enemies to become immune to debuffs too early.
  
• Fixed bug where the boss text pop-up sometimes didn't display correctly.
  

Hello gamers,

Early Access is delayed for a few days while the Steam store page goes through the review process :(. I'm sorry if anyone was hoping to play the full version today.

In the meantime, the demo was updated with 2 new carriages, 5 new upgrades, and more! Please give it a try.

The bigger patch notes will be posted when Early Access is available.

Thanks for playing!

I've pushed a small update for some bug fixes:

• Fixed a bug with the Cannon carriage which caused it to sometimes not do damage.
  
• Fixed a bug with the volume sliders which caused them to not work when operating it with a keyboard or controller. (Thanks, fodder!)
  
• Fixed a bug where the bottom mute buttons didn't update when updating the mute settings in the Options dialog. (Thanks again, fodder!)
  

Enjoy!

Welcome, gamers!

First, some important news: All Aboard! The Train Defense Express will be in Early Access starting 3/3/2025! The base price will be $4.99 (USD), but there will be a discount for early buyers. The current planned release date is 6/26/2025. I'll post a road map of the planned features once the game is released to Early Access. The patch next week will also include 2 new carriages.

Also, don't forget: All Aboard! can be played on Steam Deck!

Now, for the patch notes:

• A new text pop-up now appears whenever a boss spawns, which shows the name and description of that boss.
  
• New Power-up: Air Support - Frequently drops bombs on large groups of enemies for a short period of time.
  
• Improved the visual effects on the "Pulser" and "Cannon" carriages.
  
• Added 2 new songs (thanks, Ozzed!) to the rotation.
  
• Added a new remappable button to toggle game speed (Keyboard: G, Controller: RB).
  

• Hand of Midas was nerfed a bit to reduce its exponential scaling with star level. If you were generating 1,000,000 gold per minute, a level 3 Hand of Midas was probably responsible for 900,000 of that!
  

• When an upgrade is at MAX level, do not show a preview of the next level upgrade.
  

As always, thank you for your continued support, and I hope you enjoy!

Lots of new little things in this patch!

First of all, the demo timer has increased to 42 minutes. The 2x gameplay option means the game will go by faster, so I wanted to give you extra time to play a round.

[h2]New Content[/h2]

• New Carriage: Chain Lightning (super rare) - Bounces to target creatures near the initial target. Stuns creatures who get hit.
  
• New Gameplay Option: Sticky Targeting (Gameplay options) - Choose whether or not carriages should stick to their current target until it dies, regardless of which targeting they're using. It's enabled by default.
  
• New Gold/Minute Label - Pause the game and select a gold-generating carriage to see how much gold they generate per minute. (Give it a minute to warm up.)
  
• Show Total Carriage Number - In the chest dialog when purchasing new carriages, the 'Upgrade' label will now indicate how many in total of the given carriage type you have, and it's progress toward the next carriage level.
  
• The "Pause Game" Button Closes Dialogs - Your "Pause Game" (default: Space Bar/Start) button will now close 'purchase carriage' and 'upgrade' dialog pop-ups. It will also activate the 'Skip' button in the carriage dialog. This is a convenience so that you don't have to reach up for the Esc key.
  
• Critical Strike > 100% Bonus - If a carriage has >100% chance to critically strike, the extra percentage points over 100 will count as bonus % damage on each attack.
  
• Remember Targeting Configuration on Upgrade - When combining 3 of the same carriage type into a single, more powerful carriage, it will remember your most recent target setting (e.g. Nearest, Strongest, etc.) and use that for the upgraded version.
  

[h2]Changes[/h2]

• / Buff "Income" and "Hand of Midas" - Greatly increased their gold generation.
  

[h2]Bug Fixes[/h2]

• Fix Damage Numbers displaying too quickly at faster game speeds
  
• Fix Damage Numbers being hidden behind certain projectile effects
  
• Fix race condition causing 'Largest Clump' to fail in rare cases
  
• Fix hotkey label display not properly updating on remap in Roll Dialog
  
• Fix Controller remap keys becoming corrupted in rare cases
  
• Fix "Money Generated" information not carrying over on Hand of Midas upgrades
  

Please enjoy!