Railborn is an upcoming sandbox survival game, and it’s getting ready for alpha playtests. Washbear Studio has revealed what they’ve been working on in preparation for the test and the challenges they’ve run into.

The developer spent several weeks restoring and stabilizing co-op after a recent update introduced bugs. Simple things like connecting through Steam, sending invites and joining games needed attention before anything else could be tested properly. Those basic steps matter because a lot of gameplay depends on two or more players sharing the same world.

The fun of Railborn comes from hopping aboard with friends and sometimes being left behind. That simple idea turned out to be a hard problem to code. The team had to make sure position, movement and who is on the train stay in sync for everyone.

Buildings and construction add another layer of complexity, and if one player builds a second floor on a platform, the game must handle what happens if another player destroys the supports below. The studio fought to keep all construction changes consistent so players do not end up with different versions of the same train.

Resources are shared too., so when someone mines copper, that change must be visible to all players. Spawned remnants and removed items need to match across clients, or players will end up with mismatched inventories or empty nodes that look filled for others.

Private multiplayer sessions were rough at times, and early testers experienced many crashes, so the developers implemented a safety layer that prevented client players from interacting with fragile systems during stress tests. That helped isolate problems and avoid hard crashes while they debugged.

The team set clear expectations for the upcoming Railborn test. They need to know what is fun and what is not. They also need help finding bugs and rough edges. Testers should expect to see only small slices of the game, and those slices may be rough. There is no fixed start date yet. The developers describe their schedule as loose, a bit of flying by the seat of your pants, which means dates could change.

If you want in, sign up while the form is open (it will be open for about a week) and be ready for a raw experience. If you prefer something more polished, waiting for the demo or Early Access is probably the better choice.