Railborn

About this game

Railborn is a survival game where you build your train piece by piece. Navigate a world entangled by branching tracks. Find rare plants to cultivate on your farms. Upgrade your train - manage its power systems, direct resource flow, and distribute water. Designed for 1 to 4 players.

Construct your train piece by piece, floor by floor, railcar by railcar.

Play alone or in co-op mode with your friends.

Navigate branching paths that carve through mountains and dive into the sea.

Beyond the train lies a hostile, dying world.

Manage power systems, direct resource flow, capture and distribute water.

Recreate biomes on your train.

Uncover the truth behind a planet consumed by endless tracks.

Pilot your train up the ultimate track rising into space.

Latest news

• Patch Notes·4 Aug 2026Official

  Update #014: Bases

  Disclaimer: If you’re like me – then you don’t want any spoilers about a game until you boot it up for the first time. In that case, I suggest to not read this blog! Update 014: Atlas BasesAtlas BasesTrain HeightMini-mapPlaytest PicsAtlas Bases 🏰While I won’t go into all of the story for Railborn now – rest assured it involves an evil tech corporation named Atlas that has installed many bases around the planet of Vesper. These bases can be dangerous and challenging. So why risk your precious life? Well – these bases were once research hubs now long abandoned from their original purpose and therefor contain plants required to unlock technology! Fill your backpacks full of food, upgrade those tools, put on that smarty pants cap, and venture deep underground to recover those resources. Of course, the location of bases is not always obvious. Another reason to adventure around on foot or seek out Map Towers. Train Height 🪜There is a myriad of reasons to build up the height of your train. One reason could simply be to increase the space you have to build gardens and construct machines. A less obvious reason though is a taller train let’s you get closer to resources that might normally be out of reach when on foot. Take for example the Vesperite ore nodes that often are on the tall ceiling of tunnels. Mini-map 🗺️We added a mini-map for the player when you step off your train. Originally there was a strong desire to keep exploration a bit difficult and mysterious. And truthfully after more playtests we may see that the mini-map is too powerful for wandering around the world. But for now, it feels pretty good so we’ll see what people think. You can see the mini-map in the bottom right corner. Let us know!  Playtest Pics 📷We’ve decided that every update to include a few pics from a recent playtest. These could be beautiful, interesting, bugs, or just a special moment. Here ya go. And as a reminder, please shoot out our game link to some friends for a Wishlist or two 😊 Or even...
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• Patch Notes·6 Jul 2026Official

  Update #013: Weather

  Disclaimer: If you’re like me – then you don’t want any spoilers about a game until you boot it up for the first time. In that case, I suggest to not read this blog! Update 013: WeatherBypass SwitchesTunnelsWeather - ThunderstormPlaytest Pics  Bypass Switches 🔀If you’ve been following along with Railborn you know by now that there is a lot of tracks available for you to travel along. But did you know not every track is immediately available to you? In addition to upgrading your train to overcome inclines and weather affects; you also have to explore on foot to open up secret track bypasses. Most track bypasses are indicated by a bypass tower – although we promise to keep a few more secret. Tunnels 🚇What is an open world survival train game without tunnels! While we have had temporary tunnels in the game – we needed a system that was dynamic and could be made quickly (we are just a 2-person team after all). We now have a tunnel system that brilliantly takes any track running through a mountain – and helps add a tunnel, including a tunnel biome! We likely will extend this for the ocean too (spoilers). We also needed this polished for the upcoming playtests & demo. Weather - Thunderstorm ⛈️The weather in the world of Railborn is a real spicey meatball. Your train quickly becomes your best friend when a thunderstorm comes rolling in – keeping you dry and safe from the elements. Sandstorm? Train! (I feel at this point everyone needs to name their train). We’ll show you some more affects in the future. What I can say is the weather looks amazing, and matters in game. Playtest Pics 📷Sometimes our playtest pics aren’t just about looking beautiful, but showing us some of the antic players might try. Our closed players keep on surprising us. (more playtesters are being pulled from our list regularly). We had a limit to train width, but apparently not train height… That would get ugly in a tunnel. And as a reminder, please shoot out our game link to some friends for a Wishlist...
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• Patch Notes·7 Jun 2026Official

  Update 012: Friendiversary!

  Disclaimer: If you’re like me – then you don’t want any spoilers about a game until you boot it up for the first time. In that case, I suggest to not read this blog! Update 012: Our 1 year anniversaryOur FriendiversarySwimmingSleepingTrack BlockersPlaytest Pics Friendiversary 💐Hey friends! I just wanted to say Happy Friendiversary! Wow I can’t believe we revealed Railborn to you a year ago (approximately). Did you think we’d be done earlier? We probably did too. Haha. Real talk since we’re moving our relationship to the next level: We are a tiny team (2 people!) who have made a promise to you, and ourselves, to not release Railborn until it is ready & awesome. You don’t have to worry about us, just don’t forget about us. 😊 2026 is going to be a big year and can’t wait to have you along.I gift you a seed! Swimming 🏊‍♂️Swimming is a funny system because you put it off for as long as possible. Well, we couldn't put it off any longer! The question was if you could go under the water, or just stick above. Since we do plan for you to explore under the sea we decided to have under water swimming. Although, you probably won’t survive long in the early game in the water. Sleeping 🛌🏽The world of Railborn gets dark. Real dark. And while you can explore and harvest at night with the right tools, sometimes it is nice to just get a few Zzzz’s. Different sleeping items have different benefits. With that said, sometimes nothing is nicer than a basic sleeping bag under the stars.  Track Blockers 🚧Expect a lot of train X track interactions. This is a simpler of our blockers (we need to save some surprises no?). All the more reason to research and build a cowcatcher!  Playtest Pics 📷I figured to leave off with a couple of awesome pics from a private play test a little ways back. I think Railborn is finally entering a stage where folks playing take better pics than us. In fact, I’m positive that is the case now. And as a reminder, please shoot out our game link to some friends for a Wi...
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• Patch Notes·5 May 2026Official

  Update 011: Biomes & Motes

  Disclaimer: If you’re like me – then you don’t want any spoilers about a game until you boot it up for the first time. In that case, I suggest to not read this blog! I promise to make important release information as separate posts. Also, this post will have abhorrent grammar - that's how you know it's no AI. :) Update 011: Biomes & MotesMotesBiomesMaturity SystemThoughts?Hey friends! The two of us are hard at work! (what’s new). I feel this update contains real SPOILERS. If I was playing Railborn for the first time I would want to discover the Biome system in game. You’ve been warned! Motes ♦️Motes are the currency in Railborn used to upgrade your technology tree. While you may find motes in the world, the majority of motes are harvested from plants you grow. Now, as the game progresses you hopefully find increasingly rare plants that produce more valued motes. Treat motes as your reward for saving the ecosystem in the Railborn world. By depositing your motes into the corresponding mote vault you naturally start to rebuild the biome in question. For example as your collect more Forest motes your Forest biome grows thereby unlocking technology items. Biomes 🌳Alright, how do you grow motes? Well, by creating biomes on different train cars of your train. “Whoah whoah whoah, that sounds complicated”. It isn’t! Every biome starts with a simple plot. Now what you put in that plot is up to you. At baseline you sow mote producing seeds that you find in the world. But what else you add can affect your crops. There are other ecological elements that influence the output and growth of your crops. As you add more crops of a specific biome, a natural train car biome starts to emerge.For example maybe instead of 4 Common Lilly in a single plot you might want to include a Coral Buff that speeds up the overall mote growth by 10%Maturity System 🦉This leads us to the maturity system. You see, most mote producing plants have different levels of maturity that correspond to a bonus out...
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• Patch Notes·5 Apr 2026Official

  Update 010: Towers

  Spoiler Disclaimer: If you’re like me – then you don’t want any spoilers about a game until you boot it up for the first time. In that case, I suggest to not read this blog! I promise to make important release information as separate posts.Update 010: TowersTowersTrack TypesRunning yourself overSprintHey all. At a high level I can say we are in the thick of things: simultaneously re-working the demo/starting area and working on a large chunk of the game that follows! Is that an insane decision? Probably.Towers 🗼We have been modifying our information towers a bunch. Towers in Railborn can be navigationally tricky to arrive at - but they reward you with some good info. What that info is? Well, currently you get revealed local Core locations and track layouts. There is additional information that could be revealed (dungeons, cryopods, etc) but at the moment we feel revealing everything sorta destroys the fun of exploration. Player feedback will help us with this one.An example of a map reveal below:Track Types 🪸We have been experimenting with various track layouts. As you know our tracks are not linear, there are junctions, ups and downs. The challenge is how we communicate the best track information on a map to the player. Not as trivial as it seems. Our latest iteration currently has 2 baseline track types (not including weather affected tracks), mainline and off-road. We added mainline track as white, and orange for off-road tracks. Your speed decreases on these less maintained tracks, and also the visual in game changes. Running yourself over 💀After some local multiplayer testing we quickly realized jumping onto your train while it was moving was fun, but low stakes. Let me introduce you to running yourself over! That's right, if you jump onto your train from the side while in motion, you're good. If you end up being t-boned by your train, adios. Does this mean you can run over friends? Of course it does.Sprint ⏩We added a sprint, and have been agonizing over it fo...
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