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Development and Release
August 18, 2026 at 12:01 AM
Corrected the Linux and Steam Deck lines to the studio’s own answer and added the missing storefront tags
Railborn is developed and published by Washbear Studio, a small independent studio. The game is being built in Unreal Engine 5 and is planned for release on Steam Early Access for Windows PC. Washbear Studio is an Epic Games MegaGrants recipient.
Railborn was officially revealed at the PC Gaming Show on June 8, 2025. The reveal included both a short and a long gameplay trailer. The announcement confirmed the game's survival and train-building premise, its one-to-four player co-op support, and its Steam Early Access release plan.
The idea for Railborn is older than its announcement. The studio has said the original concept came out of an early prototyping event more than six years before the reveal, and was shelved at the time because the technology was not available to build the version they wanted. The design was picked back up roughly two years before the game was announced, which is when work on the current Railborn began.
Washbear Studio plans to release Railborn into Steam Early Access before completing it. The studio estimates the Early Access period will last one to two years. During this period, the team intends to share a public Trello development board with the community, conduct regular beta tests with early community members, and incorporate player feedback into the game's development.
The price of the game is not yet announced. The studio has stated that the price will increase before the end of Early Access.
The studio has published what each version is meant to contain:
Version | Stated Contents |
|---|---|
Early Access | The full train track world to travel and explore, multiple environments, train building and management, survival gameplay, a save and load system, and unlockable technology upgrades. The studio warns to expect bugs, crashes and corrupted saves, and suggests waiting for 1.0 for a polished experience. |
1.0 | A complete world of multiple environments, a robust technology tree, a finished story, mechanics that deepen as players go further, and ideas suggested by the community. |
In March 2026, Washbear Studio announced the first closed alpha playtest. The studio noted that testers should expect to see only small portions of the game in a rough state, as the playtest was intended to gather feedback on what was fun, identify bugs, and find rough edges. The team spent several weeks prior to the announcement stabilizing co-op after an update introduced synchronization issues with construction, player positioning, and shared resource management. The closed playtests have continued since then, with the studio adding testers from its sign-up list over time, and it has referred to an upcoming demo alongside the ongoing tests, though no demo date has been announced.
Railborn launches on Windows PC via Steam. Mac and Linux are not supported at the Early Access launch. Asked directly whether the game would run through Proton or Wine on Linux, the studio replied that it did not know, and that it expected to find out once a demo or an Early Access build was available.
Steam Deck compatibility has not been announced either way.
On Steam, Railborn is configured to use several of the platform's features. The Steam store page lists Steam Achievements and Steam Cloud saves, along with full controller support and Steam Family Sharing. As with other pre-launch details, the exact feature set may change before and during Early Access.
Railborn supports 12 languages at launch, with interface support for English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese (Brazil), Russian, Simplified Chinese, and Turkish.
Minimum and recommended system requirements for Railborn have not yet been announced. Both the minimum and recommended specifications are listed as TBD (to be determined) on the game's Steam page. A 64-bit processor and operating system are required.
Railborn drew attention quickly after its reveal. The studio reported passing 400,000 wishlists roughly seven weeks after the announcement, and said the response opened up more options for the project.
The game has since been featured in storefront events. It appeared in the Tiny Teams showcase in August 2025, which highlights games made by very small teams, and it was listed among the upcoming titles for the train-themed storefront festival that ran from July 20 to July 27, 2026.
The studio classifies Railborn as an open world survival craft game. Alongside survival and base building, its storefront listing is tagged for automation, sandbox, first-person, science fiction, resource management, story rich and immersive sim.
