Transport Tycoon fan remake OpenTTD gets largest update in years

OpenTTD 13.0 has been released, which is “one of the largest releases we’ve done in several years” according to the developers. If you don’t know OpenTTD, it’s an open source and free fan remake of Transport Tycoon which greatly expands, polishes and modernizes the beloved business sim. This latest update improves the interface further, tweaks the world generation, and more.

You can see a Summary of the changes over on Steam. There’s nothing there that would make you instantly start playing, I don’t think, but there’s a lot of nice things if you’re already a player. The interface can now be scaled to whatever size you want, rivers will now look more natural, and there are several dozen quality-of-life improvements in the full changelog.

More broadly, it’s just worth reminding you that OpenTTD exists, given that it’s one of the best building games and management games of all time.

Of course, Chris Sawyer’s original Transport Tycoon was already ridiculsouly moreish, about slowly expanding your business empire and making your network of stations and depots more efficient. OpenTTD does more than just make that old game playable on modern machines, though. Regularly updated since 2004, it also adds support for much larger maps, adds multiplayer for up to 255 players, adds an in-game mod browser and downloader, adds new building tools, adds better AI, adds new kinds of transport – and on, and on.

There might be more graspable games about profiting from transport networks, these days, but OpenTTD is the Dwarf Fortress of the genre. It’s the kind of game you might take to in retirement, like gardening. As of this weekend, it’s just a little bit better.