Iron Roads

Try the Demo for free right now, and drop by our Discord if you have any feedback!

The humans have been wiped off the face of the planet. The other animals survived and thrived, but have been too afraid to travel or even leave the villages they took over.

Here’s where you come in.

You are tasked with getting the animals back on the tracks again. Set up train networks connecting their towns and industries. Lay tracks and set train orders to connect them as efficiently as possible. Fine-tune routes to optimise your network, minimising travel time and maximising efficiency.

Balance the challenge of setting up a new transportation system against the need to preserve the environment to avoid following the humans to their fate. Throw in some tempting offers that come your way from the corporations, mostly in the form of tempting contracts, add some stuck trains, and you'll find that all is not as simple as it looked.

Iron Roads is being actively developed, but it is currently incomplete. The demo is a slice of the game that will arrive in Early Access. You can download it and play now. If you do, we'd love to hear from you: what you liked, what you didn't and what you think we could change.

Things you can do in Iron Roads right now

• Transport passengers or cargo, earn money and complete tasks
  
• Enjoy a minimalistic interface that is easy to learn, but that allows for many happy hours optimising and building your networks
  
• Choose between 3 modes of play:
  1. Scenarios: Hand-crafted experiences with distinct narratives and gameplay features
  2. Endless mode: A low-pressure game where you set parameters and play the way you want
  3. Challenges: Play time-bound challenges to compete for a spot on the highscore board
  
• Accept contracts: scenarios come with a grant system where you can follow focussed goals if you wish to earn extra money and get the satisfaction of ticking off a to-do list
  
• Performance graphs: The main goal of Iron Roads is to optimise your network, so you may wish to use the charts to analyse data relating to your finances and passengers
  
• Build large, complex networks. Or small-to-medium sized networks, if that's what floats your boat

Features Iron Roads doesn't have yet, but plan to eventually

• Numerous scenarios: right now there are two scenarios and a tutorial in the demo. Iron Roads is being developed by only two developers, so while we’re working as hard as we can, please bear with us as we add more scenarios
  
• Signals: Train orders such as one-way zones, non-stop zones, and waypoints replace traditional signals in Iron Roads. The idea is that you can do everything that signals can do, but without the steep learning curve

Iron Roads will not have

• Buses, boats, planes or any other form of transport
  
• 3D graphics: our focus is on allowing you to build large networks easily, and we find 2D better for that
  
• NFTs, lootboxes or microtransactions

Games we were inspired by

• OpenTTD
  
• Mini Metro
  
• Two Point Hospital
  
• Lets Build a Zoo
  
• Opus Magnum

Iron Roads is being developed by a BAFTA-nominated husband-and-wife team, Marina and Duncan. You can find out more about us and our work on our website.

Please note that the Linux version is built and tested on Ubuntu 22.04, though in practice it should work on any Linux with glibc version of 2.35 or higher. This includes newer Ubuntus, Arch, Debian 12, and a host of others we'll add to this list if you let us know they work!