Railway Empire 2 takes the train simulation cross-continental
The company-building management sim is ready for its second outing next year.
When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
Gaming Minds Studios and Kalypso have announced that Railway Empire 2 is on the way in 2023, complete with sprawling maps depicting the entirety of Europe and North America. It’ll come to Steam, and I’d guess Epic too, and publisher Kalypso notes that it’ll come to Xbox Game Pass for PC. The announcement was made at GamesCom 2022.
It’ll feature much larger maps than the previous game. Two large maps will cover the entirety of the US and Continental Europe, while smaller regional maps will put detail on specific areas. Railway Empire 2 also promises to have more intuitive, improved track construction with automatically placed signals, larger train stations, and real-time terraforming.
There will be 60 historical steam engines in the game, which begins in the early 1800s and focuses on running train companies in 19th century amid the railway-driven industrial revolution.
Back in 2017, Leif Johnson liked thefirst Railway Empirewell enough, calling it a “mostly satisfying management sim” that “captured the complexity behind building a railway.” He noted, however, that it first and foremost a railway expansion simulator, not a historical piece, and glossed over complex political issues around building rails in the 1800s. Nonetheless, Railway Empire did pretty well for itself, racking up a fat pile of globe-trotting expansions in places like Mexico, Europe, the Andes, and Japan.
This train-building sequel will clearly focus on its strengths, and Kalypso’s announcement mentions difficulty settings catering to both casual trainset-builders and those who like tough transport logistics.
Railway Empire 2 was revealed as in development early last year, but we’ve heard little about it since. It’ll once again have main characters to play as, each with their own abilities, alongside five campaigns, 14 different scenarios, and a free play mode.
You can read the fullannouncement for Railway Empire 2 on Steam, as well as check outits Steam page.
The biggest gaming news, reviews and hardware deals
Keep up to date with the most important stories and the best deals, as picked by the PC Gamer team.
Jon Bolding is a games writer and critic with an extensive background in strategy games. When he’s not on his PC, he can be found playing every tabletop game under the sun.
China: Mao’s Legacy is like an absurdly specific Paradox game on a tight budget, and also one of the best sims I’ve ever played
Planet Coaster 2 review
To appease a Steam user’s demands for straight representation, Webfishing added a ‘Straight’ title that costs 9,999 fish bucks
