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Frostrail began as an idea at FakeFish in 2019 and was announced on April 10, 2025, after FakeFish and Shiro Games had already spent a couple of years developing it together. Since the reveal, the game has gone through a change of visual style, a limited playtest, a closed playtest, a closed beta and a public Demo, and it passed 500,000 wishlists on Steam in September 2026. Early Access is planned for Q4 2026.

Origins

FakeFish started in 2014 and made its name when its first game, the submarine simulator Barotrauma, launched in Steam early access in 2019. The same year, the idea for Frostrail began to take shape. It was the brainchild of lead designer Ez, who was traveling to his summer cottage along a foggy, deserted highway through the forest when he daydreamed: "Wouldn't it be cool if there was some sort of truck simulator meets Silent Hill or something?"

The idea stayed with him and changed bit by bit over the years, turning from a truck game into a train game, until the opportunity came to develop it further with a team. The publisher, Shiro Unlimited, is the third-party publishing arm of Shiro Games, and by the time of the announcement the two companies had been working on Frostrail together behind the scenes for a couple of years.

Announcement (April 2025)

Frostrail was revealed on April 10, 2025 with a reveal trailer and a Steam post titled "Welcome to Frostrail, a journey through the cold". The post introduced the frozen setting, the armored steam train and its Eden Engine, the Revenants, and play for one to four players, and it said Early Access on Steam would begin the following year. The post also invited players to join the official Discord server.

Two more posts followed. On April 17, 2025 the studio introduced its team: almost 30 people from 8 countries, working on two separate projects. On April 24, 2025 it answered common questions, confirming Unreal Engine 5, a 2026 Early Access release on PC first, a crew size of one to four, limited modding, and a plan for multiple closed test sessions before Early Access. Those answers are collected on Frequently Asked Questions.

2025

By June 17, 2025, two months after the reveal, Frostrail had passed 200,000 wishlists and the reveal trailer had almost 450,000 views.

The summer update of August 12, 2025 reported large improvements to combat. The team had spent a lot of time on combat feel, animations, sounds and enemy mechanics, and the post said the Revenants were "really angry now". The art team had made many new assets such as buildings, trees and everyday items, and new weapon models had been added. The studio also changed how it builds locations: level designers still assemble much of the world from premade assets, but artists now work more directly on key locations, with more hand-placed structures and clutter. The team said it was preparing to visit Gamescom in Cologne, Germany.

The winter update of December 8, 2025 said the studio had revisited almost every part of the game that year. It had redrawn and improved large amounts of art, expanded the lore and documentation, laid the foundations for campaign progression, worked on the feel of close-range Combat, and hired new people. It also reported on the first limited playtest, held in November 2025, and announced a revised visual style.

Revised visual style

The December 2025 update explained that Frostrail no longer looked like the reveal trailer. The team had settled on a lower-fidelity style it could produce reliably and in the quantities the game needs. According to the developers, this lets a relatively small team make more content, keeps the style consistent and makes the game more performant. The February 27, 2026 gameplay trailer shows the new style, and its announcement repeated that the art direction had been refined to better support the scale and atmosphere of the game. See Trailers.

2026

On March 12, 2026 the game passed 300,000 wishlists. A closed playtest followed from April 16 to April 27, 2026, later extended to May 4, and it reached 400,000 wishlists during the test. The studio received over 100,000 applications. Its May 13, 2026 spring update reported that dozens of bugs from the playtest had already been fixed and listed a large set of additions:

• A new tutorial level and more tutorial objectives.

• Progression that carries between levels.

• New levels with multiple exit points.

• Dungeons overhauled with new modular assets and improved lighting.

• An expanded tundra biome with new landscapes and nature assets.

• Train defense encounters built into obstacle-clearing gameplay.

• Relics, found in dungeons and activated aboard the train for temporary buffs.

• New enemy variations and several new clothing sets.

• A reworked item repair system with dedicated repair workstations.

On July 20, 2026, as Steam Train Fest was about to begin, the studio opened registrations for a closed beta. The beta ran from August 31 to September 7, 2026, coinciding with Steam's PvE Survival Crafting Fest. More than 70,000 players took part, and on September 8 the studio announced 500,000 wishlists. Details of every test are on Playtests and Closed Beta.

On October 7, 2026 the studio announced a demo for Steam Next Fest, and it went live on October 19, running until October 26. The release post said combat had been a main focus since the beta, with improved melee feedback, adjusted stamina use and new animations, and described the demo as a step toward polishing the game for Early Access.

Timeline