Transport Tycoon is a business simulation game designed and programmed by Chris Sawyer for MS-DOS. It was published by MicroProse in November 1994. Using an isometric 2D view with graphics by Simon Foster, the player acts as a transport company owner, who competes against rival companies to make as much profit as possible by transporting passengers and various goods by road, rail, sea, and air.
Transport Tycoon Deluxe is an expanded and improved version of the original game, released in 1995. A version for Android and iOS was released on 3 October 2013 based on the sequel, Chris Sawyer's Locomotion. Two fan-made game engine recreations, OpenTTD and Simutrans, are also available. In November 2024, Atari SA acquired the intellectual property rights from Chris Sawyer and re-released the Deluxe edition on digital distribution platforms Steam and GOG.com in 2026.
Gameplay Transport Tycoon is a business simulation game where the player takes control over a transportation company and is tasked with building out a transportation network by constructing transport routes in order to move passengers, mail, goods and materials around an isometric map to earn money. Players have a variety of vehicles to their disposal, including trains, trucks, buses, ships, airplanes and helicopters. Every map in the vanilla game is randomly generated. The main goal of the game is to make the most profit over the course of the game. Additionally, the game tracks high scores at higher difficulty levels, but they do not determine the win-state. The game takes place in real-time and can be played optionally against a maximum of seven computer opponents. A game spans a century with the start in 1930, and finishing in 2030. There is the option to continue playing but the game won't keep a score. Time ticks off in set increments, every in-game year takes about roughly 20 minutes. The game allows the player to save at any time, and multiple saves of a particular game at any point are possible. It also provides the opportunity to play against another human player via a serial link and a modem connection.
There are a number of difficulty options available that can be modified, including difficulty and speed of the competitors, various terrain generation settings, quantity of towns and industries, subsidy multiplier, disaster occurrences and the choice between a steady or cyclical economy. Based on personal preferences, there are a number of currencies the user can pick from and town names are either based on American, English or European names. Upon starting a new game the player is asked to pick an avatar, name and primary colour for the company. The player starts out by borrowing money to finance construction of transport facilities, and is charged interest until the loan is repaid. The game also features disasters, vehicle crashes and town councils. Players can not construct their own cities, but can rename existing ones.
Routes are created by building stations between two or more locations, with the available transportation options being rail, road, air and maritime. Each type of transport comes with its own advantages and disadvantages, and depending on the vehicle can only carry passengers or certain goods. One transport route can utilize several different forms of transport, e.g. truck→ship→train. The player's company and the individual stations each have ratings that depend largely on their efficiency at moving goods from one stations to the other. A station with high ratings may attract more goods. Players can terraform the environment per tile or build canals to improve their routes, and buildings like train stations can only build on even ground. Stations and airports only accept cargo of nearby industry and towns around their local vicinity. Different stations and their area coverage can be combined into a single station if they are built adjacently. As the user plays the game and earns revenue, they have the choice of expanding service along existing routes, or expanding their transportation network. The game features a progression of technology: in any particular year of the game generally only contemporary types of technology are available. For example, in the beginning there are only steam engines, but later diesel and electric engines are introduced. In the game year 1999, monorails become available. These require a separate track system from railroads.
Vehicles in the game must be constructed at corresponding depots, which must be connected to the road or rail networks. Over the course of the game, new models of vehicles are introduced and eventually come to replace older models. Manufacturers can offer prototype designs to the player. These new vehicles generally have improved characteristics, but may suffer from reliability issues. Every vehicle comes with its own attributes, that include reliability, maintenance costs, speed, capacity and lifespan. Eventually, vehicles will need replacing as they breakdown more over time and maintenance costs increase. Vehicle sound effects change volume depending on the magnification level of the map.
Towns and cities have their own road networks, but extra roads may be needed to connect them to other towns, or to various resources. The player earns revenue by picking up resources or passengers at a certain station, and delivering them to another station where there is a demand for them. Demand is determined by the area which surrounds the station; for example stations close to towns will demand passengers. The revenues will depend on the delivery time, distance, and quantity delivered. The influence of these factors on revenue varies according to the type of goods being delivered. A product like mail will rapidly fall in value, meaning that it can only be delivered profitably over short distances, or over long distances very fast. In contrast with a resource like coal loses value very slowly, so it retains its value over long distances.
The game features also a system called Local Authority. Each city has a rating for every transport company based on the impact of their transport network. When the rating falls too low, the player will no longer be able to demolish buildings or construct new stations. The rating depends on, among others, the level of service and the deforestation caused by the company. Additionally, there is an option to advertise in a town in order to take away business from rival companies. In later stages the largest cities can offer exclusive contracts for a single year. At times, subsidies are offered by city governments to the first company to move a particular resource to their cities. In the course of a game, cities develop and expand according to various economic factors, and new industries (demand) or other resource sites (supply) may appear. Some natural resources will eventually be exhausted and industries without adequate transport service can shut down.
Transport Tycoon Deluxe Transport Tycoon Deluxe is an expanded and improved version of the original game, although the gameplay loop is largely unaltered.
The Deluxe edition has added various new game options, which includes three new environment options alongside the original Temperate climate. They are called Sub-Tropical, Arctic, and Toyland. Every terrain type introduces its own landscape, industries, buildings and vehicles. Supply and demands are also modified. Each option comes with ten pre-made maps. The World Editor, from the previous expansion is also included - Allowing the creation of custom maps and scenarios. The Martian tileset from the previous add-on is omitted from this release. The start date was moved to 1950 with the new endpoint set to 2050. With an option to change the start date in the world editor. It also added network play via an IPX connection, and the music theme for the main menu was remixed.
The updated release comes with number of in-game tweaks and features. Including the ability to buy land for future use, to refit existing ships and planes, funding construction of new industry and the capability to buy and sell shares of other companies, giving the player the opportunity to buyout the competition. Maglev trains and track were added. Helicopter can now be built separately at heliports. Players now also can rename their vehicles, stations and towns in-game. the Deluxe version loses many of the earlier vehicles from the original game, while adding several new types later on. Moreover, the vehicle names in the original game were based on real-life models, but were replaced with fictional ones in Transport Tycoon Deluxe, due to trademark issues. It also has improved railway signals, as the player is now allowed to build on diagonal track sections. The original Transport Tycoon only included bi-directional signals, permitting trains to pass in either direction, while the Deluxe edition introduced uni-directional signals, to restrict trains to a single direction of travel.
Development Having been playing Sid Meier's Railroad Tycoon, Populous and SimCity, Scottish game designer and programmer Chris Sawyer began exploring ideas and prototypes for a transport simulation game as early as October 1992, using his own isometric game engine he had developed in his spare time. For Sawyer, the game, known originally as Chris Sawyer's Transport Game or Interactive Transport Simulation, started off as a way to contend with the monotony of his game conversion work, which he began in 1988 and during this period he worked on various high-profile games like Frontier: Elite II, Goal!, Campaign and Elite Plus. These game conversions allowed him to self-finance development of the game until he would sign a publishing deal. Transport Tycoon would be his first major original computer game. His goal for the project was to try and create a game that would improve and expand upon the original Railroad Tycoon, which he spent six months playing, by including other types of transportation and trying to "simulate a world". During development, Sawyer regarded Railroad Tycoon and A-Train as his main game design influences on the game, with SimCity 2000 and Theme Park providing some inspiration in the latter parts of production.
The game also would allow him to combine his love for open ended simulation games and trains, he began with adding them into the game world alongside other vehicles. Sawyer wanted "little vehicles all going about their business", where both playing and observing the action is enjoyable. Sawyer researched as much as he could about the four types of transportion vehicles in the game as much as time constraints would allow in order to present the vehicles as accurately as possible. Although he admitted in an interview, he did not have enough time to research non-British train and road vehicles extensively. The game was entirely written in x86 assembly language, Sawyer has stated that he prefers to write in a low-level programming language as opposed to a high-level programming language like C as he wants to know what every function does in complete detail and to optimise for efficiency. He claimed that working in assembly code allowed him to add more complexity to the game, as it allowed him to optimize the workload on the processor better, without going over memory limits.