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- Enginefall is pencilled in for release in early 2026.
- It’s a multiplayer PvP survival sandbox with combat, crafting, base-building, and raiding.
- It borrows much from the extraction shooter and battle royale genres.
- Each match takes place on a massive, moving mega train where the goal is to reach the front.
Enginefall is a terrible name, and, going into a preview last thing on a Friday, I didn’t have hopes. I fully expected a slice of quickly-forgotten AA PvP survival jank. But, I hold my hands up: I failed to adhere to the simplest and often sagest of overused adages, don’t judge a book by its cover. I haven’t enjoyed a multiplayer game this much in a while.
Let’s set the scene. In a hyper-industrial and mucky post-apocalyptic future, Earth is in a bit of a state. The train network remains miraculously intact, acting as a refuge for humanity. Nomadic survivors have taken to mega trains in search of supplies and, hopefully, a permanent home. You play as one of these survivors, jumping between a permanent, customizable, meta-progression hub akin to the Helldivers 2’s ship called the Dagger, where you choose loadouts and unlock tech, and the actual trains where you take part in matches.
In each Enginefall match, players are divvied up into up to ten rival squads, from what I could tell. Armed at first with a pickaxe, you start in dingy third class, hoovering up low-level loot to unlock better weapons and armor. There’s no time to mess about, though, as you’ll quickly want to set up a base to craft a ticket for the next class, where better loot and heightened danger await. The ultimate goal here is to make it to the front of the train to become the conductor (there’s even a neat feature that lets you beam announcements to the rest of the train), claim the best loot, and extract with your spoils.
Rust on rails
Bash together a French TGV and a skyscraper laid on its side, and you get an idea of the scale of these trains as they careen through the wasteland. They are hulking things, home to various self-contained classes, as well as engine rooms, leafy gardens, and rusting container hangars, as well as a whole host of other sorts of carriage. They are labyrinthine in their layouts, peppered with vents, rooms, stairways, corridors, and rafters, seemingly intentionally placed to prompt emergent moments where squads unexpectedly run into one another.
By eschewing a wide-open world sandbox for something a lot more claustrophobia-inducing, Enginefall leans into immediacy and proximity. The result is a much faster pace of play. Interactions come at you fast, necessitating split-second decision-making and strong wits. It’s tense, thrilling stuff, and I barely had a moment to catch my breath as my squad and I advanced through the train. Enemy bases were often mere meters away from ours. Entering a new class was a gingerly affair for fear of being picked off by campers who had reached the area first. The gas-infested bowls of the train were used to slyly avoid fights.
Although combat is the primary vehicle for settling disputes and making progress, Enginefall heavily promotes social interactions as a means to get ahead. This isn’t sipping tea on the Orient Express, but Rust on rails with a similar brand of lowball conniving, backstabbing, and messy diplomacy. During the preview, I experienced fragile alliances that disintegrated within a mere 30 seconds, impassioned pleas for mercy, and more wily shenanigans besides.
Like any quality PvP survival game, Enginefall is grounded by a robust crafting system anchored to a tech tree that unlocks with points earned as you progress through the train. Gear comes in tiers that require increasingly rarer resources, urging you to keep making it closer to the front of the train to find them. In keeping with the game’s format, base-building is rudimentary and geared towards speed so that you can have a functional safehouse up in a matter of minutes. Just remember to plop down a sleeping bag lest you fancy trudging back effectively weaponless and naked through hostile sections to rejoin your squad, though that itself has an electrifying rush to it.
Genre alchemy
Image credit: Red Rover Interactive
Image credit: Red Rover Interactive
Image credit: Red Rover Interactive
Though Enginefall has all the crafting and base-building synonymous with PvP survival, it also meshes in elements of battle royale and extraction shooters. You only have a set number of respawns; use them up, and it’s game over. It’s a nifty rejigged take on the battle royale that promotes caution, strategy, and social bargaining. Only the smartest and most skillful make it to the front of the train. And once there, saboteurs can blow the whole thing up, prompting a mad dash to an extraction point to secure your hard-earned loot, one of my favorite experiences during the preview.
After cooling off from the thrill of it all, my lasting impression is one of surprise. Enginefall feels surprisingly fresh despite leaning on established genre etiquette and mechanics. I will caveat all this by saying that I’ve only played one complete game. It also helped that my squad was the last to claim the mantle of conductor and among the top fraggers, making us, I think, the winners. But what a game it was. More importantly, it feels like I’ve only scratched the surface of the train’s many secrets and even more so of the social potential developer Red Rover Interactive has squeezed into its carriages. Enginefall feels like the making of something novel, innovative, and gratifying. I’ll forgive the terrible name.
FAQs
Visit the Enginefall Steam page and tap the Request Access button under the Join the Enginefall Playtest. You’ll then receive a notification by email when your request has been accepted.
Yes, Enginefall is a PvP survival game with multiplayer at its heart.
Enginefall is currently expected to release in Q1 2026.
References
- Enginefall (Steam)
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