This article on a free update for train factory strategy game Railgrade is the absolute height of presumption, for we have never actually covered Railgrade before, even though it came out ONE MILLION YEARS AGO in October 2023.
I cannot hear your cries of outrage and scorn, however, for my ears are filled with the otherworldly whistle of speeding locomotives. The locos wail to me of a brand new campaign encompassing 11 missions and nine hours of playtime. Did you play Railgrade? Do you wish there were more of it? Well, stop carping about our spotty coverage and get this patch down your trousers, then.
The campaign in question is Rapid Repo Rescue. As detailed on Steam, it takes you to a brand new colony planet except that, oops, it turns out the colony ship accidentally landed on a planet owned by a rival corporation. As such, you’ll now need to rush-develop a factory network in order to recharge your space launcher before the legal goons arrive and suitcase the entire site from orbit.
The new campaign is the work of a Railgrade player, Mortiz, who is currently studying at university. Railgrade devs Minakata Dynamics commissioned him – in the form of cash, scandalously enough, rather than the standard creative industry currency of exposure – in light of his past work for the mapmaking community. A few Discord group members have pitched in with playtesting, seemingly for free. I frown upon devs who enlist their players as unpaid testers, but in fairness, this appears to have been a more informal community production.
If you own Railgrade, you’ll find the Rapid Repo Rescue on the bonus campaign menu. “We gave Mortiz access to every yet-unused asset in the game,” lead programmer Daniel Dressler notes. “This meant new trains, new industry, and new resources.” The latter bits include “a Natural Gas & Hydrogen set of energy production chains”, a new Gas Powerplant, and Offshore Gas Wells.
If you never played Railgrade, because you think trains are the work of the Devil, you may be more interested in the developer’s forthcoming Whiskerwood. It’s about building factory-colonies of mice and sending shipments of goods to villainous cats overseas – a pleasantly concussed reimagining of European colonialism, plus jolly pirate ships. We’ll try to write about that one when it actually comes out.
