Co-op

Co-op in Railborn includes sharing a moving train, building on it and harvesting resources in the world. Washbear’s January update describes Steam connections, invitations and joins, then explains the work needed to keep those activities synchronized. It offers concrete examples of cooperative interaction rather than just a multiplayer label on the store page.

Update 008 reports work to bring co-op back to a stable state after attention had shifted to other systems. Its private multiplayer test examples include crashes and players changing the train brake. In Update 015, published on 12 September 2026, Washbear says it chose to add multiplayer before Early Access instead of waiting for a 1.0 release; the resulting work moved the Early Access target to summer 2027. These are development statements, not a verdict on a released game’s reliability. Our account follows the studio’s report rather than firsthand testing.

The shared state covers train movement, construction, harvested resources, machines, controls and farms. Washbear illustrates the problem with friends collecting a player by train, floors being destroyed beneath a partner and players changing the brake state. Copper mining supplies another example: harvested world resources and their spawned remnants must agree between players.

Update 015 establishes that multiplayer is planned before Early Access, but it does not establish hosting rules, dedicated-server support, cross-platform play or how a shared session saves progress. Its earlier examples also do not define permissions for buildings or controls. A setup guide would need explicit information about session ownership, persistence and the feature set available in a public build.