Hi everyone! We have a couple of items to discuss today: reporting on the progress of our next major update; taking part in Train Fest 2026; celebrating 10 years of Derail Valley development and; announcing a major update to our soundtrack. Let's dive right into all these:
Steam is launching a new event today - Train Fest 2026! Being strictly focused on trains, it could put Derail Valley in front of many eyes that have never seen our game before. To that end we're taking part and are running a special -25% discount for the next 7 days.
Make good use of this discount, because we rarely run them. In fact, we've only had one before - when we entered the B100 development era, knowing that it would take a long time.
B100 - In Early Development
We've been developing Derail Valley for almost exactly 10 years now! It's in great shape nowadays, yet our 100th build, that we're currently working on, will be the game's biggest update by far.
We're only scratching the surface of it today, so please bear with us. It's still the early days of B100 development, and we aim to finish it by the end of 2027, or possibly a bit later. Please keep in mind that with the complexities involved it is impossible to predict a specific time frame, and the update could end up being pushed further. There is no release date yet.
The high-level vision for B100 has been laid out on our public roadmap. However, with these progress report posts we want to reveal some more detail and specifics, as we get closer to the release. Things discussed here are mostly heavily in development, or finished but still require extensive work to integrate into the game:
(you can click images, or open them in a new tab, for high resolution)
WE6-960 Electric Locomotive
One of the most exciting additions to Derail Valley in B100 will be its first proper electric locomotive, powered by an overhead line! WE6-960 will be a large, late-game, dual-cab locomotive. Rated for 2000t of freight haul, it will pair excellent visibility with immense power. The main caveat though - it is constrained to overhead lines.
The new WE powertrain (short for wire-electric) is an intricate simulation of the 3 kV DC electrification system, which we chose for the most interesting gameplay. In true Derail Valley manner, it has a perfect balance of realism and fun. Driving electrics will keep you busy, carefully managing temperatures of both the traction motors and the rheostat, while needing to balance rheostat bypass positions, field weakening, voltage drops, substation transitions, and other quirks unique to this powertrain type.
If these terms don't sound familiar, don't worry - the electric locomotive will be quite easy to pick up, despite being different from diesel and steam. Mastering it with extremely heavy loads, however, is where your skill and knowledge will be put to the test.
Overhead line equipment will be prone to damage, and to make it operational again you'll need to pay to fix it. You'll also need to pay for used electricity, which will be charged per substation, through fees. Regenerative braking can help lower electricity consumption. Finally, not all of the railway network will be electrified - think only some mainlines. We'll discuss this more in future posts.
Tech Upgrades - Improved Graphics, New VR & More
Technical revamps, while not particularly exciting, are a huge part of the work done on B100 so far. They are also the reason for the slow start. We started work on B100 well over a year ago, and it took most of that time to port the game from Unity 2019 to Unity 6+. A lot of our custom graphics solutions had to be completely revamped to accomplish this porting, and some of that work is still ongoing.
The upgrade primarily unlocks new tech to us, necessary to develop some of the upcoming performance-heavy features, and it also helps us further improve graphics and workflows over time. Our goal with Derail Valley has always been for it to be the best train simulator in the world, long-term, so with these upgrades we're notably extending its lifetime.
One of the reasons we're switching to a newer Unity version now and not sooner, is that it necessitated a complete revamp of the entire VR implementation, as well. Also many months in the works, the new VR system is now mostly done, and is aimed to bring support for more headsets, better controls handling, new features such as finger tracking, and being able to grab and climb onto things.
On top of that, there are numerous more improvements and rewrites throughout the game's code. Under the hood this is essentially the 5th iteration of Derail Valley, in the making.
Railway Crane, Winches and Rerailers
In B100, rerailing will finally get physical! For minor derailments you'll need to tow affected vehicles onto a pair of rerailers, to guide them back on tracks. Sometimes, to accomplish this you'll need to use a winch gadget, or a few.
For really big accidents, however, you'll need to bring out the massive new railway crane. This will be a heavy, self-propelled vehicle, where you'll manually operate the boom, hoist, counterweight, hooks, outriggers, and more, in order to lift derailed vehicles and gently lower them onto the tracks. While the crane operation is complex, you'll be properly instructed on how to do it. The crane will have a low maximum speed, making it inconvenient to tow around everywhere you go - you'll only want to use it when necessary.
Overall, with the winches, rerailers and railway cranes, you can expect a lot of fun with physics trying to figure out the most efficient ways to clean up your disasters, depending on severity and the environment. And of course, in case you prefer the simple old "Rerail" comms radio function instead, it will still exist in the easy difficulty settings.
Road Traffic, Pedestrians and Wildlife
Long gone will be the days of a dead world! In B100, there's going to be a system of traffic vehicles, pedestrians, industry/office workers, birds and wildlife, adding to the liveliness and immersion of the environment. They'll all yield to each other, to trains at level crossings, and to you if you get in their way.
Traffic density will also be an indirect indicator of how well a location is doing. Keep a location happy with deliveries and it will be bustling with traffic, but neglect it and it will slowly deteriorate into that familiar, eerily quiet place.
Improving The Late-Game Experience
One of the primary goals with B100 is to notably improve the mid-to-late gameplay, especially removing repetitiveness for players with 100+ hours of gameplay. To achieve that, we've set a few core principles:
All rail vehicles need to be permanent, and finite. Where you leave them is where they'll stay. While sounding simple, this brings numerous gameplay and technical challenges.
All locations and delivery orders need to be driven by a reactive, dynamic supply and demand ecosystem, affected by your actions, or lack thereof (depending on your difficulty settings).
These and many more features, to be discussed in the future, need to be tied into an experience that is still immersive, non-intrusive and not overwhelming to players, just like the game is currently.
On the design side, this necessitated some supporting solutions, such as an additional type of interface to intuitively bind everything together, as well as a fully reimagined tutorial system. On the technical side, there's a ton of work on deeply intertwined core systems, and just setting up the architecture for it all is going to take a lot of time. While this work is not exactly presentable currently, we are happy to report that we're done with the design phase, and development is underway.
Sharing the specifics right now would be risky, as it may turn out that we need to make some significant changes during development, but we think more concrete results will be ready to reveal by next summer.
World Updating & The North America DLC
A big part of the ongoing technical upgrades is also revamping our world tech and editing tools - now heavily underway. This is done in order to upgrade the railways with many new features (double-tracks, catenary, etc.), but also to add support for additional maps, needed for the future North America DLC.
For better efficiency, we'll develop both maps simultaneously - the base game's Southeast Europe map will have more developed tracks, additional industries, towns and villages, while the North America DLC map will match all that, but set in a different biome, with a different layout of tracks and locations.
Both maps will stay the same size as currently, but vastly better utilized, with more locations and a gameplay loop that will incentivize taking more diverse routes. This should be clearer when we reveal the new cargo ecosystem and track maintenance dynamics, in the future. There will be slight differences in playstyles between the maps too. For example, NA will favor longer straight mainline sections.
Combined, B100's new features and content are aimed to provide 200+ hours of new experience for existing players, for free. The DLC will come optional on top of it, if you wish to spice up your game with a whole new theme, and further support our team.
The DLC will contain a whole new map and 6 fictional, US-inspired locomotives. While each map will play as a separate career (session), we aim to make DLC locomotive types compatible with all maps, so that you can mix them, depending on your session settings.
Some work has been done on the DLC already - with all the road vehicles designs and models complete (shown above), some of the locomotives being in progress, and the overall vision for the map layout and environment style well-defined. Our entire team has also travelled to the US for inspiration earlier this year - which has been an amazing experience!
Early Access - How Much More?
Derail Valley has been in Early Access for a while, and we want to address this, especially for the new players who may be concerned. For many years now, with our every major release we ensure that the game is wrapped up as a whole, fully functioning and a complete experience. If bugs or performance issues slip through, we're quick to fix them in subsequent smaller updates.
So, since 2020, Derail Valley hasn't really been "unfinished" in the sense that the word "early" may imply. Rather, we kept the label because we didn't want people to think we're done working. On the contrary, we've been working on Derail Valley full-time for ten years, without a break, and plan to continue at it in such capacity until our full roadmap vision is fulfilled - and then some.
B100 will add a large chunk of what's on our list, but not all just yet. Two notable features await 2028 or later - passenger transport and non-player-driven trains. Once those are in, the Early Access label is likely to be removed.
Soundtrack Major Update - Out Now!
Over the past several years, in our spare time, we've notably improved the Derail Valley soundtrack. We've released the remastered version of it this June, on our 10th year anniversary. Now at 47 minutes long, almost double the previous length, the album is a cohesive blend of post-rock, ambient electronic and string orchestra styles, with all the tracks reimagined in higher quality, expanded, and with some new ones added.
The album is available for free on YouTube, and you can also buy it here on Steam - if you wish to support our team, and gain access to the individual tracks in higher quality formats.
[dynamiclink href="https://store.steampowered.com/app/1308910/Derail_Valley_Soundtrack/"]
Amazingly, over 5000 of you have bought the album so far! Thank you so much for the support! If you have, it's already been updated to the new version automatically.
In B100, all the soundtrack music will be available in-game too. On that note - if you are making video content featuring Derail Valley, note that you are allowed to use our album music with just crediting Altfuture in the description!
Onto Progress Update 2
All in all, the development of our biggest update to date is progressing well, and according to plan. This first post is a bit shy with things to show, due to the massive design, technical and administrative hurdles now behind us, but as we gain momentum we expect more of the visible parts and the complex systems to become presentable.
The next progress update post is tentatively planned for January, with a bi-yearly cadence. Eventually, as we get closer to the end of 2027, you can also expect a series of many in-depth videos going over all the new features, and the new "era title" announcement, like we've done before with Overhauled and Simulator releases.
You probably have many questions about B100. Feel free to ask in this post's thread, and we'll reply with what we can! Do note, however, that for some things it may be too soon to answer. Thank you everyone for your patience and support, and we'll see you early next year with the next progress update!
-Your DV Team
