Transport simulation
OpenTTD vs Simutrans vs Mashinky
OpenTTD, Simutrans and Mashinky share the appeal of building a network one connection at a time. Their transport choices, passenger routing and economic rules lead to different kinds of challenge.
Compare the three games
| Game at a glance | OpenTTD ↗ | Simutrans ↗ | Mashinky ↗ |
|---|---|---|---|
| Vehicles | Trains, road vehicles, ships and aircraft, hauling passengers and cargo between towns and industries. | Trains, trams, monorails and maglevs, buses and trucks, ships and aircraft, all carrying passengers, mail and goods across one map. | Trains above all, with buses and trucks on the roads since the 2019 road-vehicle update. No ships and no aircraft. |
| Building | 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. | An isometric tile grid. Track, roads and waterways follow the squares, and the pak set you install — 64, 128 or 192 pixels to the tile — decides what the whole world looks like and how hard it is. | A square grid, on purpose — an isometric build mode with board-game rules, where track pieces snap into the lattice. |
| Towns and cities | 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 when they are served, and every passenger and crate routes itself to a destination of its own, changing vehicles on the way. | Simulated. Villages grow into cities as you serve them, and demand for cargo and passengers follows. |
| Economy | 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, in full. Fares and freight revenue against purchase prices and maintenance costs, a company balance to keep in the black, and industries that only produce once you connect them. | 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. |
| Price and platforms | 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. | Free and open source under the Artistic License 1.0 — the current stable release is 124.5 — for Windows, macOS and Linux, from simutrans.com and free on Steam. No browser build. | A paid download ($24.99) on Steam, Windows only, and still in Early Access after launching there in October 2017. |
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 OpenTTD for classic multimodal transport management and extensive add-ons. Choose Simutrans for destination-based passengers and goods moving through connected services. Choose Mashinky for a railway-focused 3D world with grid-based construction and a token economy.
Thirty years of one game
OpenTTD started as a faithful open-source rebuild of Transport Tycoon Deluxe and long ago stopped being only that. It now has its own graphics set, OpenGFX, so no original game files are needed; its own decades of balance changes, features and fixes; and a release cadence of a few versions a year — 15.3 landed on 4 April 2026. It is GPL-2.0 licensed, which is why it is still here and why it will still be here in another twenty years.
It is worth being clear about what that maturity means in practice. Everything in OpenTTD has been argued over by people who play it seriously, for a very long time. Nothing in it is accidental, and very little is unfinished.
The tile grid
Track is laid tile by tile. Every segment follows the square grid in 45° steps, so a sweeping curve is an approximation made of short diagonals, and terraforming works by raising and lowering the corners of tiles rather than sculpting a surface. This is not a limitation the game is trying to grow out of — it is the shape of the whole design, and it is what gives OpenTTD its readable, almost diagrammatic look.
Inside that grid, players build astonishing things. Signalling is deep enough to sustain an entire subculture: block and path signals, one-way variants, and junction designs with names and reputations. A well-built OpenTTD interchange is a piece of engineering, and the grid is what makes it legible as one.
The economy is the game
Cargo pays by three things at once: how much you delivered, how fast you got it there, and how perishable it was. That single rule generates most of the strategy — mail and passengers reward speed, bulk freight rewards throughput, and the line that makes money is rarely the line that looks best on the map.
Around it sits a real business: a loan you start with and have to service, a running balance, a company value, and an inflation model over a century of game time. You can go bankrupt, and in the early game it is a live risk rather than a theoretical one.
Towns and industries
Towns grow when the service they get is good and stall when it is not, and a well-run network visibly changes the map over a century. You can also push them along directly by funding roads and new buildings, which is a slow and expensive way to make a place worth serving.
Industries are the other half: they produce raw material, they want it delivered somewhere that processes it, and the chain from mine to factory to town is what a serious OpenTTD network is built around. Connect an industry well and it produces more; ignore it and it can close.
AI rivals and multiplayer
You are not alone on the map unless you want to be. AI companies compete for the same towns and cargo, and multiplayer supports up to fifteen companies on one map — cooperating on a shared network or racing each other to the profitable routes. Public servers have been running continuously for years, with their own house rules and long-running games.
NewGRF: the mod ecosystem
NewGRF is OpenTTD's add-on format, and its library is enormous — vehicle sets for practically every country and era, industry sets that rewrite the whole cargo chain, town and house sets, and total conversions. Because the format is old and stable, a set written years ago generally still works. If you want your network to be specifically Swiss, or specifically 1930s, somebody has already built the parts.
What it costs and where to get it
The download from openttd.org is free, for Windows, macOS and Linux, and needs nothing else to run. It is worth knowing that the store listings changed in March 2026: on Steam and GOG, new players now get OpenTTD bundled with a paid copy of the original Transport Tycoon Deluxe. Existing owners keep what they had, and the project's own download remains free of charge — so if free is what you want, take it from openttd.org.
There is no official mobile build and no browser build. It also runs happily on hardware far older than anything a modern 3D game will tolerate, and entirely offline.
Who it is for
OpenTTD is for people who want a transport business to run, and who enjoy being measured by it: cargo chains, loan repayments, a network that either pays or does not. It asks you to accept the grid and the sprite art, and it gives back more depth per hour than anything else in the genre — for nothing.
Frequently asked questions
- Is OpenTTD free?
- Yes. OpenTTD is free and open-source software under GPL-2.0, and the download from openttd.org costs nothing. Since March 2026 its Steam and GOG listings bundle it with a paid copy of Transport Tycoon Deluxe for new players, but that is a store arrangement — the project's own download is still free.
- Do I need the original Transport Tycoon to play OpenTTD?
- No. OpenTTD ships its own graphics set, OpenGFX, along with free sound and music replacements, so it is fully playable without any original game files.
- Can I play OpenTTD in a browser or on a phone?
- Not from the project itself. OpenTTD is distributed as a desktop download for Windows, macOS and Linux, and there is no official browser or mobile build.
- Does OpenTTD have multiplayer?
- Yes — up to fifteen companies on one map, cooperating or competing, with long-running public servers as well as private games. There are also AI companies if you want rivals in a single-player game.
