A model railway sandbox
Rolling Line is a model railway simulator from Gaugepunk Games where you build layouts, drive trains, and explore scenery at two different scales. You can stand in a room at human size and operate the railway with switch boards and DCC-style hand-held controllers, or shrink down to miniature scale and walk the layout on foot. Driving works from inside the cab as well, so you can ride along in the driver's perspective. The world is sandbox style: track and scenery can be placed anywhere, and the official layouts cover scenery and trains from New Zealand, America, Brazil and other places. Trains include diesel, steam and electric types with a range of freight and passenger wagons, and you can pick wagons up and throw them as physics objects. The environment has a dynamic day/night cycle and dynamic weather, plus working signals, level crossings, and overhead wires for track electrification.
Playing together
Rolling Line has online co-op. You can join public servers through the server browser, host a private game for friends, or play over LAN. Everyone works on the same layout, so one person can lay track and scenery while another drives trains or sets up signals. Building is shared work: place track pieces, drop in props like trees, buildings and vehicles, and paint them with the simple color painting system. You can also load and unload freight onto wagons, including logs and shipping containers, and build electric circuitry out of logic gates, sensors and lights. Layouts and liveries (train color schemes) are saved in plain text, which means you can copy a save file and paste it straight to a friend.
Before you start
The game runs on PC with keyboard and mouse, and it also supports VR headsets including HTC Vive, Valve Index, Oculus Rift and Windows Mixed Reality. If a headset is connected it launches in VR automatically. Valve Index controllers get full finger tracking, and VR controls can be re-bound through the SteamVR Input System. Locomotion options include teleporting, grabbing the world to move, free directional movement on the trackpad, manual rotation, and a player height setting for different room setups. The Steam Workshop holds thousands of player-made layouts and over 20k mods and liveries; subscribing to an item makes it appear in-game. You can also mod locomotives and wagons with custom 3D models and textures, and import your own 3D terrain. Building works by hand in VR or with PC-only map making shortcuts on desktop.