Transport strategy
Mashinky vs OpenTTD vs Transport Fever
Mashinky, OpenTTD and Transport Fever turn railway building into a transport business. The biggest differences are how you lay tracks, what you carry and how you pay for the next expansion.
Compare the three games
| Game at a glance | Mashinky ↗ | OpenTTD ↗ | Transport Fever 2 ↗ |
|---|---|---|---|
| Vehicles | Trains above all, with buses and trucks on the roads since the 2019 road-vehicle update. No ships and no aircraft. | Trains, road vehicles, ships and aircraft, hauling passengers and cargo between towns and industries. | Trains, trams, buses, trucks, ships and aircraft — over 200 vehicles in Transport Fever 2, plus a large Steam Workshop of mods. |
| Building | A square grid, on purpose — an isometric build mode with board-game rules, where track pieces snap into the lattice. | A tile grid. Track runs along square tiles in 45° steps and terraforming raises and lowers tile corners — the look is unmistakable, and entirely deliberate. | Free-form: curves you place yourself, full terrain modification, and modular stations, harbours and airports assembled from pieces. |
| Towns and cities | Simulated. Villages grow into cities as you serve them, and demand for cargo and passengers follows. | Simulated. Towns grow when the service they get is good, stall when it is not, and you can fund roads and buildings to push them along. | Simulated. Towns grow and re-zone into residential, commercial and industrial districts as your network makes them reachable. |
| Economy | Yes, and unlike anyone else: a token economy where each kind of cargo pays in its own currency, spent on vehicles and buildings across seven historical eras. | The whole game. Cargo pays by how much, how fast and how perishable; there are loans, a running balance, company value, AI competitors and multiplayer for up to fifteen companies. | Yes — more than ten production chains with factories and goods, running costs per vehicle and line, a campaign across three continents and a free-play mode. |
| Price and platforms | A paid download ($24.99) on Steam, Windows only, and still in Early Access after launching there in October 2017. | A free download for Windows, macOS and Linux from openttd.org. Since March 2026 its Steam and GOG listings are bundled with a paid copy of Transport Tycoon Deluxe for new players, though the download from the project stays free. No official mobile or browser build. | A paid download on Steam, GOG and Epic for Windows, macOS and Linux, plus a Console Edition for PlayStation and Xbox released in March 2023. Transport Fever 3 follows on 29 September 2026 on PC, Mac, Linux, PS5 and Xbox Series X|S. No mobile or browser version. |
This guide is published by the creators of Rail Island. We are not affiliated with the other games featured here. Details are based on official websites and store pages; features, prices and availability may change. Spotted a mistake? Let us know at info@railisland.com.
Which game should you choose?
Choose Mashinky for grid-based railway building and a token economy. Choose OpenTTD for a classic transport company spanning rail, road, sea and air. Choose Transport Fever for free-form construction, detailed 3D scenery and production chains.
One person, nine years
Mashinky is a one-man project. Jan Zelený put it into Steam Early Access on 6 October 2017 and has been building it since; the art, the design and the code are largely his. That is worth knowing before you buy, in both directions — it is why the game has such a consistent, unusual look, and it is why updates arrive in their own time rather than to a publisher's calendar.
It is also why the game is unusually confident about being different. Most transport games take the Transport Tycoon shape and adjust it. Mashinky takes the board game shape instead, and much of what feels odd about it for the first hour turns out to be deliberate.
The grid, and why it is there
Track in Mashinky snaps into a square lattice, laid from an isometric build mode with a defined set of pieces: straights, curves, points, crossings. You are not drawing a line across a landscape; you are fitting shapes together, and the puzzle is which shapes will fit in the space the terrain leaves you.
The result is a game that plays like a good boardgame — legible, constrained and surprisingly deep once the constraints are the point rather than an annoyance. Junctions and station throats are a real design problem, and a well-built yard in Mashinky looks like somebody solved something, because they did.
The token economy
This is the mechanic nothing else on this list has. There is no single balance. Each kind of cargo pays in its own currency — a token — and the things you want to buy cost specific tokens rather than a general pot of cash. Hauling timber gets you timber tokens; the building that wants timber tokens is the one you can now afford.
What that does to the game is force breadth. You cannot find the single most profitable run and repeat it, because the run that pays in the currency you need next may be somewhere else entirely. Every expansion of the network is a decision about which economy you want to be in.
Seven eras of progression
Mashinky runs across seven historical eras, from early steam forward, unlocking vehicles, track types and buildings as you go; five of the seven are in the Early Access build today. Progression is the spine of the game — where a sandbox hands you everything and lets you choose, Mashinky hands you a little and makes you earn the rest, which is what gives a long save its arc.
Towns that grow
Villages become towns and towns become cities as your network serves them, and their demands grow with them. It is the familiar transport-game loop — serve a place, it gets bigger, it wants more — and it works because the token economy means "more" is rarely the same thing twice.
Roads, and what is not in the game
The road-vehicle update of October 2019 added buses and trucks, so the network is no longer purely rail. There are still no ships and no aircraft. If a map full of every transport mode is what you are after, Mashinky is not that game and has never claimed to be — it is a train game with road feeders.
What it costs and where it runs
$24.99 on Steam, Windows only, and still formally in Early Access nine years after it got there. That last fact cuts both ways: the game is large, stable and very playable today, and it is also still officially unfinished, with two of its seven eras yet to arrive. There is no macOS or Linux build, no console version and nothing on mobile or in a browser.
Who it is for
Mashinky is for people who like a puzzle with rules. If the phrase "board game about railways" sounds like a compliment, and if an economy that refuses to reduce to one number sounds interesting rather than annoying, it is one of the most distinctive games in the genre. If you want to draw freehand across open country, look elsewhere first.
Frequently asked questions
- Is Mashinky finished?
- Not formally. It has been in Steam Early Access since October 2017 and five of its seven planned eras are in the current build. It is large and playable, but it is still an Early Access game from a single developer, and updates come at their own pace.
- What is the token economy in Mashinky?
- Instead of one balance, each kind of cargo pays in its own currency. Vehicles and buildings cost specific tokens rather than general money, so the network you build is decided by which currencies you need next — which is what stops the game collapsing into one optimal route.
- Does Mashinky run on Mac or Linux?
- No. Mashinky is a Windows-only Steam release. There is no macOS or Linux build, and no console, mobile or browser version.
- Are there buses and trucks in Mashinky?
- Yes, since the road-vehicle update of October 2019. There are no ships and no aircraft — the game is built around trains, with road vehicles as feeders.
