At this point, the game has just reached alpha, meaning it's basically feature complete and needs a lot of tweaking and polishing.

The trick is just laying track in a way that will be cost effective and help shipments get to new locations in a short amount of time. The click and drag interface allows players to create paths anywhere on the map while the game adds tunnels, rises, and bridges where necessary. Laying track in between destinations looks to be an easy task as the land and track will conform to any plans. Players can also eventually buy into industries and make a longer ranged profit that way. Players can make a lot of money delivering goods between different industries and finally where the final goods are demanded. Natural resources are worth less money than manufactured goods like cars farther down the line. In order to make money, players will have to create working railroads connecting resources to cities and run trains back and forth to deliver the goods. The last person standing with stock wins the game so this amount basically serves as a hit point meter for all player companies. Players will be able to purchase stock from the other tycoons throughout the game using their available funds. Each tycoon will begin with a number of stock. Scenarios will put players in competition with these other personalities (or other actual live people in multiplayer if that's what you're into) to create the most profitable railroad company. All of these characters when under the control of the computer will have fully functional artificial personalities that make them behave in different ways as well as implement different special abilities. The game itself puts players in the roll of an up and coming tycoon having to compete against other large tycoons and robber barons of history like J.P. Maps will also have a randomization option to make sure players have plenty of play options. Ten designed maps will ship with the game centered around different parts of the US and Europe, each with different challenges and resources.

Railroads! takes place from the early days of the railroad systems up to the 1970s to capture both classic and more modern machinery. In fact they're looking to create a game that's bright and welcoming. These guys aren't looking to create a gritty game. As Dan the producer man said, it's the 'friendly utopian color pallete' where everything is nice and neat. All of the cities, towns, and industry buildings scattered around the environment have been given nice little animations to make them attractive while trains have all been designed to the Firaxis visual aesthetic that we've become used to. Trains, towns, and environments have flavor and fun and unlike many railroad tycoon type games in the past, all of these eye catching objects are compressed onto a smaller map.

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