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Unrailed! is a cooperative construction game developed by Swiss video game developer Indoor Astronaut, and published by Daedalic Entertainment. In China, the game is published by Bilibili.[1]
| Unrailed! | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Developer(s) | Indoor Astronaut |
| Publisher(s) | Daedalic Entertainment |
| Engine | MonoGame |
| Platform(s) | |
| Release | September 23, 2020 Xbox One October 27, 2020 |
| Genre(s) | Action |
| Mode(s) | |
The game initially entered Early Access on September 9, 2019, and was officially released on September 23, 2020 for Windows, macOS, Linux, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, and on October 27, 2020, for Xbox One.
In Unrailed!, online or local, up to four players cooperate to create a railroad to keep the train from derailing en route to its destination.[2] To lay down the rails, the players need to extract resources from the environment. Wood and iron are obtained by chopping down trees and from blocks of stone.[3] The game incorporates roguelike elements with procedurally generated terrain, resource management, and limited saves.[1] The environment comes with wildlife that blocks the train's path like cows and llamas, or non-player characters which are able to remove parts of the track from the main path.[4] Each time the train arrives at a station, it can be upgraded with various improvements by buying them with bolts earned while playing. These upgrades allow exploring new biomes or, among other things, to extract materials more quickly.[5] The game has five game modes: endless, versus, fast, sandbox, and time.[6] A sequel, Unrailed 2: Back on Track, was announced on November 30, 2023, and released into early access on November 7, 2024. [7]
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Unrailed! was originally developed for a student project during the Game Programming Lab 2018 at the ETH Zurich.[8] At the end of the semester, the prototype received positive feedback from the jury and players at the final presentation.[9] The project was selected to join the SwissGames delegation at Gamescom 2018 in Cologne.[10]
Indoor Astronaut received support from the Ludicious Business Accelerator[11] as well as Pro Helvetia.[12] Pro Helvetia played a crucial role by allowing the development team to go to the Game Connection 2018 in Paris, where they met their future publisher, Daedalic Entertainment, who financed the rest of the development of Unrailed!, and took care of its promotion and distribution.[13]
Originally planned for release in Early Access during summer 2019, the release is postponed after the developers met Chinese publisher Bilibili during GDC 2019 in San Francisco, with whom they signed a contract for the distribution of the game in China. This pushed the release date to September 2019.[14]
The Xbox One and PlayStation 4 ports of the game were developed by the company Sickhead Games. However, the Nintendo Switch port was developed internally at Indoor Astronaut, because they wished to have more control over the quality of the game.[15]
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Unrailed! received "generally favorable" reviews from critics for the Windows version of the game, while the Switch version received "mixed or average" reviews, according to review aggregator Metacritic.[16][17]
Awards
Unrailed! received multiple awards:
- Swiss Game Awards - Audience Choice Award (2020)[citation needed]
- Tapiei Game Show - Best Innovation Award (2020)[18]
- Nomination for the Deutscher Computerspielpreis (2020)[19]
- TOMMI Children Software Award, 3rd place (2019)[citation needed]
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