If you like the idea of trudging through a frozen wasteland, counting every bullet and watching your body temperature drop, Frostrail should be on your radar. It’s an open-world survival FPS you can play solo or with three other players, and its centerpiece is a steam-powered train that doubles as your mobile home base. Developer FakeFish is targeting Q4 2026 for the Steam Early Access launch.
What Frostrail actually is
The pitch is straightforward: explore, scavenge, craft, and survive. You’re dropped into a frozen, corrupted world filled with eldritch threats, and you keep yourself alive by looting supplies, building better weapons and gear, and keeping your locomotive running. The survivors you control are called Penitent Gardeners – fighters tasked with purging the monsters so humanity can eventually reclaim the land. Those creatures aren’t the product of nuclear fallout here; they come from a pact struck between the land’s emperor and the void.
Exploration takes you into abandoned bunkers and strongholds where a flashlight and your gun are pretty much all you’ve got. Ammunition, crafting components and other supplies are scattered across the open world, and there’s a strong incentive to check every corner before heading back to the tracks.
Cold is the real enemy
Instead of managing gas mask filters, Frostrail makes temperature the survival hook. Blizzards will blind, slow and suffocate you, frostbite is described as a constant, ever-present danger, and heat sources are scarce. Scouting threats before you commit to a location matters just as much as having enough rounds in your magazine.
The train is the progression system
This is where Frostrail leans hardest into its own identity. The locomotive isn’t a static hub – it’s something you rebuild session after session. Fuel becomes as important a pickup as ammo, and you’ll constantly be deciding whether resources go into your personal gear or into the train itself.
- Reinforced walls and armor upgrades to survive attacks
- Weapon and crafting stations so you can refine gear while riding the rails
- Engine upgrades for faster travel
- Extra carriages for more storage space – or just to make the place feel more like home
Over time, a basic engine turns into a rolling fortress, which is exactly the kind of long-tail progression co-op groups tend to stick with. If that loop appeals to you, we’ve also covered Astromine, another four-player co-op project aiming at 2026, and the survival-flavored The Last Caretaker.
Early Access plans and pricing
All of Frostrail’s core mechanics are supposed to be in place on day one, with FakeFish expanding the game afterward. The studio lists additional loot items, dungeons, biomes, items, weapons and spawn locations as planned additions, alongside the usual bug fixes, polish and balance passes.
The price will rise slightly at the 1.0 launch, which is expected roughly a year after Early Access begins. In practice that means picking it up early is the cheaper route if you already know you want it – just with the usual caveat that you’re buying an unfinished game.
Where to go next
Frostrail is one of several 2026 and 2027 releases worth tracking, and we round up everything in our gaming articles section. For another upcoming release date breakdown, check our piece on Wo Long 2.
FAQ
The game is slated for Q4 2026, launching into Steam Early Access. Full 1.0 is expected about a year after that.
You can play solo or in co-op with up to three other players, for a total of four.
The game comes from developer FakeFish.
You can reinforce the walls with armor upgrades, add crafting and weapon stations, boost the engine for faster travel, and attach extra carriages for more storage space.
Yes. The price is set to increase slightly with the 1.0 launch, so the Early Access version is the cheaper option.