FreeRails is an open-source railway strategy and management game inspired by the famous Sid Meier's strategy games Railroad Tycoon and Railroad Tycoon II from the 1990s. Turning a growing rail network into a business: choose where to build, which services to run, and how to invest as the world and economy change. FreeRails takes that strategic foundation as inspiration for an independent open-source railway management game in the spirit of its successors.
Building and operating a railroad is at the heart of play, with connected choices around terrain, stations, cargo, train services, company finances, and competition. We aims for engaging strategic decisions rather than realistic simulation, and for rules and presentation that make the state of the railroad easy to understand.
The project is written in Java and includes a desktop client and game server; development is ongoing.
The project continues a long-running series of FreeRails and Railz projects. Read the project history for background.
Bug reports and feature requests can be opened in the issue tracker. Contributions are welcome via pull requests.
FreeRails is distributed under the GNU General Public License, version 3 or later.