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2004 · Remake · Business simulation · Indie

OpenTTD

Remake

OpenTTD is a business simulation game initially developed by Ludvig Strigeus in which players earn money by transporting passengers and cargo via road, rail, water, and air. It is an open-source remake and expansion of the 1995 Chris Sawyer video game Transport Tycoon Deluxe.

Released: 6 March 2004
Platforms: Android Linux Windows macOS
Genres: Business simulation Indie Simulation Strategy
Developers: —
Publishers: —
Modes: Co-op Multiplayer Single-player
Perspective: Bird view / Isometric
Themes: Business Sandbox
Country: Scotland
Age ratings: ESRB E
Languages: Arabic, Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional), Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Hebrew, Hungarian and 14 more
Time to beat: 16hmain story87hcompletionist

About

OpenTTD is a business simulation game in which players try to earn money by transporting passengers, minerals and goods via road, rail, water and air. It is an open-source remake and expansion of the 1995 Chris Sawyer video game Transport Tycoon Deluxe.

OpenTTD duplicates most features of Transport Tycoon Deluxe and has many additions, including a range of map sizes, support for many languages, custom (user-made) artificial intelligence (AI), downloadable customisations, ports for several widely used operating systems, and a more user-friendly interface. OpenTTD also supports local area network (LAN) and Internet multiplayer, co-operative and competitive, for up to 255 players.

Players say

Media

The articlegameplay, story, development, reception

Gameplay

OpenTTD gameplay is very similar to Transport Tycoon Deluxe, on which it is based, although there are many improvements in both options within the game and ease of use.

A player's aim is to build a transportation network using trucks, buses, trains, airplanes and boats to link together industries and towns on the map and transport the cargo they produce. Every time a vehicle makes a delivery of some cargo, players receive an income, allowing them to build more infrastructure (rails, stations, etc.), build more vehicles, modify the terrain, and interact with towns, via their local authorities. The default game runs from 1950 to 2050, during which a player aims to get as high a performance rating (based on number of vehicles, income, amount of cargo delivered, etc.) as possible.

Development

The development of OpenTTD was driven by the desire to extend the abilities of Transport Tycoon Deluxe to support user-made additions to the graphics and gameplay, as well as the desires of users to play the game on operating systems and computer architectures which the original game (released in 1994 for MS-DOS and programmed in assembly language) did not support.

There was a prior attempt to modify Transport Tycoon Deluxe to run on more modern operating systems. OpenTTD was preceded by a commercial conversion of Transport Tycoon Deluxe to run on Windows 95. It was created in 1996 by the FISH technology group, but Nola released in 1999 as part of a compilation of older Tycoon games. This release was still greatly restricted in operating systems and computer architectures it could run on.

Reception

OpenTTD has been praised for the number of improvements it has made to the original Transport Tycoon Deluxe, such as the AI, graphics, sounds, and ability to play multiplayer. OpenTTD received the most votes for Game of the Year for the 2004 Amiga Games Award. Lewis Denby from PC Gamer ranked OpenTTD 20th in its May 2011 list of best free PC games. Hungarian Unix Portal users chose OpenTTD as favourite (free) game in 2005, 2007, 2009, and 2010. In 2014 OpenTTD was named by PCGamer among the "Ten top fan remade classics you can play for free right now".

In 2015 and 2016, Rock Paper Shotgun ranked OpenTTD 8th on its The 50 Best Free Games on PC list.