Heya engineers!

It's time for a new update! And it's another big feature request from the early access survey: the sandbox mode, allowing you to set up your train and basically the entire game up to your wishes! There is more of course, but as always, here's the TLDR-overview for this update first:

And now in more detail:

Sandbox Mode

Do you want to try out the mathematically best possible train configuration? Do you only want to see slot machine stations? Or play with 8 players, where two players have axes and another 2 players have pickaxes to get even more resources? Now you can with the new sandbox mode!

Here you can configure your train setup and basically the whole game to your liking!

Classic Mode

A special case of the new sandbox mode is the classic mode, where we tried to recreate the setup of Unrailed 1 as closely as possible. Perfect if you're feeling a bit nostalgic😉

Classic Soundtracks 🎵

Due to popular demand, we’ve brought back some of the beloved classic soundtracks from Unrailed 1, now played across multiple biomes! Get ready to groove to a fresh version of “Steampipe Sonata” in Autumn Meadows, jam out to “Desperado Desert” in Cargo Canyon, relive “Endtrailed” in Boxcar Bayou, and vibe with “Anchoovy” on Island Interchange.

Also, as a special treat, you can now listen to the complete soundtrack on YouTube. So head there and leave our composers some love ❤️!

And if you'd like to give us additional support, check out the Steam Soundtrack, which we updated with the new tracks as well!

New Cartridges

We've also added three new cartridges to unlock for those of you who already have everything:

• Meteor: Has a chance to spawn a meteor at the beginning of a map that crashes into the ground and mines resources in a radius

• Wagon Buff: Buffs wagons close to you

• Insta-Crit: Has a chance to instantly destroy an enemy on the first hit

• Grappling Claw (Action Cartridge): Allows you to draw tools and items to you from a distance

New Characters

Two new characters are about to join the roster: Spike the cactus and Bernd the Beaver! Also new - thanks to Tana over on our Discord server - the cardboard hat!

Free Weekend!

Have you always had a couple of friends or family you wanted to introduce to the world of Unrailed? Now's the perfect time to do so - we are doing a free weekend starting on the 28th August at 7pm CET / 10am PT, where you can play Unrailed 2 for, well, free!

Changelog

Highlights
- New: Classic Mode
- New: Sandbox Mode (defeat 3 bosses to unlock)
- New: 4 Classic soundtracks from Unrailed remade and added for U2
- New: Cactus & Beaver characters & Cardboard hat added
- New: 3 New cartridges
Claw action cartridge to draw distant items
Insta kill NPCs cartridge
Meteor cartridge
Wagon buff cartridge

Networking
- New: Online settings menu to reduce bandwidth (increases ping though) or force relay servers
- Improvement: Dynamic extra bandwidth reduction & congestion avoidance
- Bug fix: Lobby browser should be stable now https://u2.unrailed-online.com/#/sessions and allows to join when the game is running by clicking the play button in the browser
- Bug fix: Web map browser creates also a lobby when you’re in the main menu and clicking the play button in your browser https://u2.unrailed-online.com/#/maps

Balance
- Balance: Ghosted train & fully upgrade a wagon achievement can’t be unlocked in a shop anymore (you must leave it once)
- Balance: Players with tools & buckets don’t get cocooned anymore from the spider boss
- Balance: Magnet pick & claw cartridge and magnet extension can’t pick up from the opposite team in versus anymore
- Balance: Players need to defeat one boss to unlock the Time Mode

Misc
- Improvement: Lobby player count added to the steam rich presence
- Improvement: Buttons that need the privacy policy to be accepted are now hoverable (as they can be clicked)
- Improvement: Default volumes are now all 100%
- Improvement: Better progress bar readability in settings
- Improvement: Cleaner ESC menu
- Improvement: Progress is now shared among all steam users on the device (before the game supported multiple users but it led to confusion)
- Crash fix: Possible crash fix with 8 players
- Bug/Freeze fix: You should now be able to use the keyboard without joining a second player when hovering text fields with the controller. It should probably also fix the freeze issue for some players
- Bug fix: When carrying the cannon cart flag, it was playing the shooting animation even though it’s not shooting
- Bug fix: Cannon cart is sometimes spamming particles in shop
- Bug fix: Lava blob not visible in shop on storage wagon
- Bug fix: Lava blob ropes not visible when its carried
- Bug fix: Wagon remove bubbles sometimes not deleted when scrolling in a replay
- Bug fix: When using the bucket once with a milk wagon, the longer (milk wagon) effect duration stood even when milking directly an animal afterwards
- Bug fix: Auto-track pickup from a mimic as a crafter did not work
- Bug fix: Transformer drops items with box pull extension
- Bug fix: Bot looped with a transformer with box push and pull
- Bug fix: Controller rumble reenables every restart
- Bug fix: There was a locked non-existing cartridge slot in the cartridge shop
- Bug fix: Game sometimes showed the same unlock pop-ups after starting the game
- Bug fix: Selection in highscore menu sometimes flipping down
- Bug fix: When remapping a split input, it wasn’t possible to navigate through the menus anymore
- Bug fix: When remapping a split input and restarting the game, the new mapping got mixed with the default mapping