Now for the dev diary on the most important thing, the thing that I’ve (over)hyped - trains! Trains are the lifeblood of your town, delivering the resources you need and giving you opportunities to trade what you make. On the other hand though, your village is a part of the railroad - it’s being settled to provide it with additional resources.

A quick note on resources - right now, there are five different ones (besides Pops): wheat, mushrooms, water, wood, and gold. Wheat and mushrooms are both agricultural exports; wheat for more standard foodstuff and mushrooms for the more magical concoctions. Water may be used as a vital need for Pops, as well as for any steam engines that come by. Wood is the main construction material, and can be obtained through removing trees. (To be implemented.) Gold is the standard trading currency, to which most resources can be converted. A sixth resource is planned before the public prototype is available, bread, to create a more valuable food export.

Anyway, trains consist of a locomotive (sorry, no multi-locomotive trains here), and multiple cars. Each car will have a resource or some passengers, and has a transaction it’s going to make: gift, purchase, sale, or request. The first train in the game is just gifts, representing the initial supply to start your town. Future trains will give you the opportunity to sell certain goods for gold, and purchase others for gold. Finally, requests are the opposite of gifts - depending on game mode (to be implemented way down the line), you may be penalized for not fulfilling these!

That’s about the jist of it. Some more detail & variants are planned, but here’s what I have so far: