- Small update: v1.2.1 - 20 August 2026
Optimized rendering for the bulldozer tool (previously, if you selected a large area with it, the way it would draw the overlay was super wasteful and would decimate the frame rate). Added additional vegetation assets, so undeveloped land is more visually interesting. Because of how the terrain system works, addition of the new vegetation assets means the placement of trees will look different when loading a save file, compared to how they looked when you saved it with prior game version, but it doesn't cause a meaningfully breaking change (the file should still load just fine, you just may notice the different tree placement which includes the new plants). Also added a version label to the main menu and pause menu.
- Multiplayer! - 24 May 2026
With the Gold Edition of IsoMetro, the Grimesoft infrastructure allows you to host a game without running into port-forwarding headaches. A dedicated server is available (and due to being distributed as a Docker image, should also be fairly straightforward to set up on any platform), but you can also host an embedded server directly from the game. This is still the classic old-school city builder experience, just with the ability for multiple people to interact with the same world simultaneously.Want to work on isolated cities and then connect them up naturally? You can do that!Want to set up utility infrastructure while a friend builds roads in a new district? You can do that!Want to randomly demolish important electrical lines and see how long it takes for everyone else in the server to notice that half the town has moved out because they didn't have power? Yep, you can do that too!Th…
- Tiny fix to start the game on some systems - 28 April 2026
This update is for Windows users who are experiencing IsoMetro failing to launch. It seems to be a result of telling SDL (the library we use for keyboard, mouse, drawing in the window, etc.) to initialize features we don't even use -- allowing more to go wrong from differences in system configuration. Multiplayer features are around the corner, but this isn't that update. It's still in the works.
- Bundling hack for launching within the Steam runtime on Linux. - 11 October 2025
Before this, launching the game thru Steam would fail while running the executable, downloaded from Steam, without using Steam to do so (i.e. by double clicking in a file browser) would work, at least on Ubuntu 24.04 used as a developer system. Bundling has been adjusted, so that an additional required library ships alongside the game, and this has been observed to both fix launching the game thru the Steam app on Ubuntu 24.04, and launching the game on Steam Deck (although this update does nothing to improve the controls there yet).
- Metro Monday 4 - 8 April 2025
More updates rolled out for IsoMetro, so here’s another Metro Monday writeup. This week’s changes have been solely content expansion. For starters, there are two new car models to improve the visual variety of traffic vehicles driving around town. These are a flashy yellow sports car, and a not-so-flashy tan minivan. Altogether, there are now 7 vehicle assets: four personal cars (the new sports car and the minivan, plus the existing sedan and pickup truck), the freight-hauling box truck, the public transit bus, and the subway traincars beneath the ground. Next up, there are two new industrial buildings. First, if you’ve got enough demand in the Consumer Goods market and an adequate workforce, “Petroligarch Corporation” may choose to build a massive and intricate chemical processing facility that takes up a whopping 4x4 tiles. Moving on to the Advanced Products market, “Mike Rowe’s Micro…
- Metro Monday 3 - 1 April 2025
It’s been two weeks since the prior Metro Monday (these are for announcing changes, and are not strictly weekly). Here’s what’s happened in that time: On the asset side, there are two new buildings. First, “Anderson Antimicrobial” is a 3x3 tile chemicals facility. The archetype for this building is “level 3” of “consumer goods,” found in dense industrial areas. Second, “Monarch’s Concourse” is a 2x2 tile corporate office highrise. The archetype for this building is “level 3” of “office work,” found in dense commercial areas. On the code side, while there are plenty of things to keep improving (don’t worry, we have a huge list of stuff to get to — eventually), focus has been primarily on simulation performance. So, the simulation engine now includes a profiling framework, and after setting up plenty of labeled “measurements” within the sim engine code, we can meaningfully identify expens…
- Metro Monday 2 - 18 March 2025
Here’s a rundown of what happened between today’s Metro Monday and the last one, which was also the first one. Firstly, this past Friday we launched the game! The Free Edition, which has been available on itch.io for years as a rolling developer preview of sorts, is now also on Steam serving as a demo. The Gold Edition is now also available on both itch.io and Steam for purchase. We want to thank everyone who has tried either edition of IsoMetro so far, and beyond that we’re especially appreciative of those who have decided to fork over their hard-earned cash for the Gold Edition. As far as the state of the game itself, we’ve rolled out a few updates since launch. There’s now a Main Menu, so instead of jumping straight into an empty world with a clunky message box asking you whether to spawn the “starter level,” there are instead buttons on the main menu to start a new city in a few dif…
- We launch this Friday. - 11 March 2025
On Friday this week, we’re going to launch IsoMetro because it’s finally in a state that we consider presentable. Our plan is to continue gradually improving the game after launch (refining the simulation engine, increasing the variety of buildings, adding new modes), so to take inspiration from a particular game that has its own facts released every Friday, we’ll be releasing update news on Metro Mondays when there is something interesting to report on. In this first edition, we’ll detail some recent improvements that you may not be aware of if the last time you’ve played the game was a few months ago (or never). On the asset front, the Blender artists have been hard at work creating a slew of buildings that far exceed the detail level and variety of the Free Edition content. At time of writing, there are 16 residential buildings, 13 commercial buildings, 7 industrial buildings, 5 publ…
