As a former Roller Coaster Tycoon and Sim City kid, I’m an appreciator of a sprawling, detailed management simulator. While there are still a nice selection of these games on the market, in 2026, there haven’t been a ton of newer options that have spoken to me the same way that some of these classics have. And then, I tried out Transport Fever.
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More specifically, I started out with Transport Fever 2, the 2019 title from Urban Games that has managed to garner a bit of a dedicated cult following that will be quick to tell you that TF is perhaps the best, most addictive game in the genre these days. In preparation for an event last week in New York City to be one of the first people to go hands-on with the forthcoming Transport Fever 3, I decided to finally jump in myself.
After just a couple of campaign missions and messing around with the Freeplay Mode and hundreds of available mods, I get it. Transport Fever scratches a gaming itch I didn’t even really realize I still had, which made me all the more excited to see what 3 was primed to bring to the table later this year.
In addition to a flight around Manhattan to celebrate things like helicopters and the State of Liberty now being featured in the game, and an old-timey trolley ride back and forth from my hotel to the event space, I spent somewhere between two and a half to three hours getting my feet wet with this early beta version of Transport Fever 3. Here’s how it went for me.
What’s New in Transport Fever 3?
First, let’s talk about what Transport Fever 3 is bringing to the table in terms of new content and features compared to previous iterations. Nicolas from Swiss team Urban Games gave a 20-minute presentation and demo of the game to all of us in the room to get us up to speed with the new game before we all jumped in for ourselves. One of the first things mentioned to us was that Transport Fever 3 is not meant to be some revolutionary title in comparison to what’s come before. It’s taking the series’ foundation and growing it to bigger heights.
There was a lot of talk about the community around the game, the feedback they’ve gotten previously, and doing their best to make sure Transport Fever 3 hits on everything possible that the playerbase is looking for and values. This is also the first time that Urban Games has self-published one of their properties, so this laser-focus on player wants/needs clearly seems like a great direction to be operating from.
The previous games have had an admittedly steep learning curve, as well as what Nicolas described as some players feeling that the late game can get a bit “bland” by the end – all things Urban Games is working to remedy this time around to make the game both more accessible, but also with a longer tail to keep expert players locked-in and satisfied dozens of hours into the experience.
There’s a lot that’s being added and tweaked to TF3 this time around, so let’s go over some quick notes to get you in the loop too:
- Less of a focus overall on money management. It’s still a core part of the game, but less deterministic for your overall failure/success in the game (you can also take out loans to keep your bank account afloat).
- Over 300 different vehicles, including new classes: helicopters and cargo trams.
- 35 different industries and 40 types of cargo, including items specific to the new Subarctic regions of the game. The Subarctic playstyle also creates more of a need to implement ships into your game earlier than in previous series entries.
- A campaign timeline that spans from the year 1900 to 2033.
- A day/night cycle as well as dynamic/adjustable weather conditions. These don’t have any bearing on your operations within the game, so there’s no need to stress over, say, heavy rain grounding your planes. These systems are just there for further customization and realism overall.
- Landmarks added as a reward for leveling up and succeeding in the game, including things like the Statue of Liberty, lighthouses, amphitheaters, pagodas, and museums.
- The ability to customize your Headquarters on the map in order to make it more personal to your preferred style.
- A Tycoon Mode for added/specific challenge.
- Fishing grounds and oil rigs to manage.
- 8 new and improved Campaign missions
- Loading/unloading speed for cargo, which adjusts based on your success/choices in the game.
As you can likely already deduce, Transport Fever 3 feels like an ambitious improvement over what’s come before in the series, which should be good news for fans of the previous titles that are simply ready for more content and things to do within the game loop they’re already accustomed to.
Urban Games was also keen to tell us that they are a no-AI studio, meaning that you can expect everything you’ll eventually get to experience in Transport Fever 3 is completely handmade by real people that are passionate about their work. I’ll leave it up to you if this is an important thing to note or not, but I felt it relevant to pass along in 2026 as the gaming industry continues to have some difficult questions to ask itself.
After this presentation where I learned all of this new information about Transport Fever 3, it was time for me to jump into a real, Transport Fever 3-branded helicopter and fly around NYC. After that experience, however, it was finally time to test the game itself. Let’s start with the new campaign.
Fun, Guided Campaign Missions
For me personally, the campaign in Transport Fever 2 is actually what I enjoyed the most when I tried it out prior to the preview event for the new game. Interestingly, this is different from a game like Roller Coaster Tycoon or Sim City, where I was more than happy to spend hundreds of hours making my own sandbox experiences in those worlds. For whatever reason, I enjoy the direction and little stories of Transport Fever that the campaign offers, so I was excited to see what 3 had in store.
Nicolas from Urban Games explained to us that previous campaign feedback in the series had been that it could get a bit repetitive and boring by the end. To help aid in these areas this time around, it feels like 3 is leaning harder into some more interesting and entertaining campaign scenarios overall. For example, the first mission takes place in New Orleans around the year 1900 and focuses on wrangling alligators around town and preparing the streets of the city for a Mardi Gras parade.
Transport Fever 3 feels like an ambitious improvement over what’s come before in the series.
As the game’s intro as well, this mission also organically teaches you things about camera movement, vehicle line implementation, building construction, and other basic features. Coming so soon from testing out Transport Fever 2 before this event, I noticed right away that this intro mission felt significantly better at getting a new player up to speed this time around in 3. This is great news, as I have to imagine that there have previously been players that tried to get into the series, couldn’t wrap their heads around it quickly enough, and then bounced off for something else.
By the end of this mission, which was also noticeably much more alive with multiple characters, voice acting, and actual story plot, I felt I was much better equipped to keep learning and progressing into the latter, more difficult missions from here. This is obviously what you want from an intro.
Next up was actually what will be the fourth mission in the full version of Transport Fever 3, which tasked me with getting a campground at the original Woodstock Music Festival off the ground in order to have a successful concert. This one took a much more comical angle than I expected as well, with my avatar needing to cooperate with local law enforcement to make sure all of our festival plans were on the up-and-up.
This included moments where I’d decided to transport human waste from the Woodstock campground to the local river just to get it away from the campers. Out of sight, out of mind, right? Well, not so fast. The local sheriff wasn’t a fan of this move, so I quickly had to pivot my transportation lines to direct the waste disposal to an actual, proper facility further down the road. There’s a cheekiness to Transport Fever 3 now, and it works for me. This Woodstock mission specifically had fun, tongue-in-cheek references to bands and songs of the era while avoiding any potential copyright infringement.
Previous campaign feedback in the series had been that it could get a bit repetitive and boring by the end. To help aid in these areas this time around, it feels like 3 is leaning harder into some more interesting and entertaining campaign scenarios overall.
We were told that previous feedback about the campaign in older games was that it could get a little repetitive, even boring by the end. These new characters, storylines, and objectives legitimately seem like they’ll correct this issue. While I didn’t get to go hands-on with it, we were informed that the game’s final mission takes place in 2033 and focuses on space travel while revolving around a countdown timer. I’m genuinely excited to see how that one plays out.
Extra goals to “three-star” a mission are back as well, with the aim of the team to make them a true challenge where you won’t do everything correctly the first time around. I saw this myself in the Woodstock mission, where I initially failed it entirely in my first attempt before completing it with two stars the next time around. Personally, I felt the urge to go back for that third star, which is a good sign for the campaign. However, it was then time for me to hop into Transport Fever’s Freeplay Mode.
Going Full Sandbox
Freeplay and Tycoon modes, of course, are where Transport Fever 3 opens up into whatever you personally want it to be within the confines of the game’s mechanics. As you’d expect from previous iterations, map customization is back when you start a seed, fully adjustable with terrain and difficulty sliders to fine-tune it exactly how you prefer. This includes mod support from the get-go as well, which if you know the series, you know is a massive part of the Transport Fever community. It’s nice to see it’s still going to be alive and well in 3.
I’ll also note here that even in this early beta stage, Transport Fever 3 really does look noticeably better from a visual fidelity standpoint. Towns and cities feel much more alive with fully named citizens walking the streets, vehicles of all kinds bustling around the map, and little details like specific signage for stores/restaurants and lounge chairs on the beaches.
I zoomed in as far as I could to inspect my newly created world, and I was consistently impressed with the improvements here. The older games looked good too, but there’s already an obvious sheen in TF3 that adds to the realism and immersion as you build and grow the infrastructure of your map.
This level of detail and iteration applies to pretty much everything else in the game too. Menus are better, setting up lines and purchasing/dedicating vehicles to them is streamlined, and other small tweaks of the sort all serve to simply make Transport Fever 3 feel smoother and make more sense this time around. I won’t lie, this can feel like a complicated series when you get into the minutiae of all the systems at play, so this added dedication to making 3 more sensible to experience is a massive win.
As someone that tries to see where I can push a sandbox, I also experimented with building things like insane highway junctions and intersections in the middle of nowhere, just to see if any drivers would start traveling on them by default. And well… no. My design was nonsense, and even the NPC motorists could see this, opting for the routes available to them that would get them from Point A to Point B most efficiently instead of indulging the madness of their overlord sitting behind the mouse and keyboard.
Menus are better, setting up lines and purchasing/dedicating vehicles to them is streamlined, and other small tweaks of the sort all serve to simply make Transport Fever 3 feel smoother and make more sense this time around.
I tested out everything I could here, eventually setting up a web of 20+ transportation lines with all offered vehicles: trucks, planes, helicopters, ships, trams, and trains. I built all their relevant stations and ports as well, feeling like a genuine city planner by the end. Was everything I built and laid out actually well-optimized and properly serving of my community? Not at all. But dangit, I had fun doing it, and I’ll learn how to improve from here.
Sandbox-type modes aren’t for everyone, and I admit I expect the campaign of Transport Fever 3 will personally grab me the most once the full game launches. Still, it’s clear that for those inclined towards these types of modes, TF3 will be the best option in the series yet for players that want to really go all-in, string their web of transportation lines all over the map, and live out any of their city planning dreams.
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More to Come
All in all, despite being more of a relative newcomer to Transport Fever in general, I left this preview event feeling great about what I’d experienced. The game still obviously slots into a very specific type of genre and playstyle, so like anything else really, it won’t be for everyone. However, fans of these types of games and series followers alike have a lot to look forward to with Transport Fever 3.
Personally, I’m completely on board to work through the eight campaign missions once they’re ready to go. I had a blast with both on offer at this event, and I’m excited to see the entertaining directions the other six go, particularly the one focused on space travel in the near-future.
While we don’t have a concrete release date yet, Transport Fever 3 is expected at some point in 2026. It’s planned to launch on PC, Xbox, and PlayStation.
The team at Urban Games has also been posting regular public updates during development, and you can follow along on their Steam page if you want to stay looped in as launch day rolls ever closer.
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- Released
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November 8, 2016
- Developer(s)
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Urban Games
- Publisher(s)
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Good Shepherd Entertainment
