Railway Empire 2 Developer Interview – Daniel Dumont

There’s always something fascinating about locomotives and engineering. On my travels around Australia, I’ve been to many Railway museums to learn about how the rail shaped this great southern land of ours and was lucky to see a classic steam engine being restored in Toowoomba. Seeing so much about these mechanical marvels sparked a curiosity in me which led me to discover the very enjoyable “Railway Empire” on Nintendo Switch, and many hours have been spent building my network and also sometimes just going along for the ride on a classic steam engine to enjoy the scenery.

With Railway Empire 2 making tracks on Nintendo Switch recently, I was very lucky to have a chat with Gaming Minds Studios‘ Creative Director and Studio Lead, Daniel Dumont, to ask him all about the development of Railway Empire 2 for Nintendo Switch, how a game like this gets pitched, and what challenges are faced on the Nintendo Switch’s portable hardware in the face of more powerful consoles.

Keep your eyes peeled at the end of the interview for your chance to win 1 of 3 AU Digital copies of Railway Empire 2, kindly provided by Kalypso Media. A special thank you to David from Kalypso Media for helping make this interview happen.

After my time with Railway Empire 1 on the Nintendo Switch, it’s clear from the attention to detail there’s a passion for locomotives and engineering, how does a game like this get pitched for the green light so to speak. Did it start as one person’s vision? Or a team of Railway enthusiasts?

Daniel Dumont: Gaming Minds is dedicated to historical real-time strategy games with strong economy components. We also have a specialized graphics engine and a focus on game mechanics, AI and game logic, so whatever idea we are following, it has to fit these strengths. In the case of Railway Empire, it was Simon Hellwig, the former General Manager of Kalypso Media, who threw the idea in of working on a tycoon-like railway game. For a long time, there was no game like this released, but it seemed to fit perfectly for our studio. So we worked on a detailed vision statement and after this was accepted by Kalypso we started working on the game. I don’t think we had any real railway enthusiasts in the team, however many at Gaming Minds liked the era and steam locomotives and became railway enthusiasts as we developed the game.

What was the development timeframe for Railway Empire 2? How big was the team?

It took about 3 years and our team has 18 developers plus one external studio for 3D models and one for the videos. And there is also an external musician and sound designer.

During the development process for Railway Empire 2, were there any features or content that were added in last minute? Or was the development process thoroughly planned?

We planned the whole development process very thoroughly, so the bigger features were always planned long before they were implemented. However many things are balanced after the playtests based on the beta player’s feedback. The warehouse technology for instance, was further down the tech-tree originally, until it was pointed out how essential this tech really was.

What sort of research goes into making the game historically accurate?

The research concentrated most on locomotives, famous rail lines, and the economic and social aspects of the era of steam locomotives.

Fortunately, there are many books available for these topics. Mostly from the US actually, books with detailed construction blueprints for locomotives and maps of famous rail lines, it’s a period of time that a lot of historians and engineers find fascinating.

Are there liberties taken to balance the historical aspects of the game with gameplay/fun? Is there a process involved when it has to be done?

Fun always has priority. The game has to be easy(ish) to understand and what happens in the background has to be transparent. The best way is to be very accurate with some historical aspects so you can have a bit more freedom for other areas. For example, the locomotives are extremely accurate in design, colours, etc. Their technical data, however, has to fit to the game. In real history, the last steam locomotive was 20-times faster than the first one, If we had taken this into the game, the game would play very differently in 1830 compared with 1930 and cause a lot of balancing issues.

What were the main challenges when making Railway Empire 2 for The Nintendo Switch given the portable hardware against more modern gen hardware like the Series X?

Most challenges were the size of the maps and the interface. The maps need a lot of memory and that’s also why the complete US and Europe maps are not available on Switch. Then, the small screen requires larger fonts and icons and causes more overlaps of dialogues, which involved quite a lot of cleaning up and editing.

Was there a dedicated team for the Nintendo Switch Version, or does optimisation happen towards the end of the Development cycle?

There was a dedicated, external team for the port. They started about 10 months before the release and we supported them however we could.

Were there compromises or content you refused to make in order to preserve elements of the game for the Nintendo Switch? 

No, the game is 100% the same. We had to cut the 2 full maps and the multiplayer mode. Apart from this, there are only visual limits as the amount of animals and trees on the maps and the number of buildings in bigger towns.

I understand you’re working hard on updates and patches for post launch, and you recently revealed a road map for new features, but are you able to shed light on potential DLC coming to the game in the future? (I’m a big fan of the Aussie DLC in Railway Empire 1 by the way!)

Thankyou! We have a team dedicated to patches and DLC for coming years so you can count on many releases, comparable to what we’ve done with Railway Empire 1. I’m afraid I can neither confirm nor deny whether we’ll create another Australia-themed DLC, though.

On the topic of updates and patches, is it a case of fixing as many bugs as you can, or do you have a triage process where priority updates are pushed out?

Fixing bugs always has priority and we always make time for this. Of course, when it comes to a release, we try to combine as many fixes and new content as possible.

Final question, it’s probably a while off, but if there were to be a Railway Empire 3 (and fingers crossed there will be) what’s a dream feature you would love to include?

To be honest, I don’t know yet. Some say we should add more modern locomotives and electricity, but I think that could lose some of the romance of the steam trains and the adventure of developing new regions if we move to a later era. In an ideal world I would like to add a setting for “Dinosours On/Off”. When “On”, the whole flora and fauna is set to prehistoric time and while riding with a train, I could watch dinosaur herds roaming the land with the kids! Sadly I don’t think that will be coming anytime soon.

Thank you for taking the time with me today, I’m very excited to get my hands on Railway Empire 2 and start building my empire soon!

Set during the dawn of the age of rail in 1830, Railway Empire 2 expands on its predecessor with 60 detailed locomotives as you set out to become the biggest Railway company in the world.

You can purchase it digitally from the AU Nintendo Eshop here – Railway Empire 2 – Nintendo Switch™ Edition/Nintendo Switch/eShop Download