Cargo Protocol: Cyberpunk Trains Demo · published
Today, July 20, we are officially announcing the game that the Flat Lab team has been working on for the past six months. You may know us from Menace from the Deep, Timeloop: Sink Again Beach, or I Want to Believe. At 8:00 PM Kyiv time, Steam Train Fest begins—the first event where we will showcase Cargo Protocol: Cyberpunk Trains.Cargo Protocol: Cyberpunk Trains is an economic strategy game about freight trains, production chains, and the struggle for corporate influence in a cyberpunk world.Before this, we completed development on two other games—Nocthra and Kill Factory—but for a long time, we could not find a suitable themed festival for them. They will be officially announced on August 17 as part of the Ukrainian Games Festival 2026.This experience prompted us to approach our next project differently: to decide in advance on the context in which the game would be presented and use it as a creative constraint. Steam’s event calendar included festivals dedicated to trains and cyberpunk, which sparked the idea of combining both themes in a single game. What began as a practical decision gradually evolved into a fully realized concept with its own world, mechanics, and identity.As the game director, this project is especially meaningful to me. In our previous games, I primarily focused on direction, cutscenes, and storytelling. This time, I wanted to create a game where the gameplay itself takes center stage and every session unfolds into a unique experience.I had long wanted to work with trains, logistics, and a sandbox strategy format in which players shape their own stories. The game does not lead them through a predefined scenario. Instead, it provides a system of rules, conditions, and interconnected mechanics from which different situations naturally emerge.My greatest source of inspiration was Super Loco World. Before development began, I played many train games on Steam in an effort to better understand the genre. However, many of them felt overloaded with granular settings and mechanics that distracted from the most interesting parts of the experience.
That is why we used the simplicity and clarity of Super Loco World as our starting point, while taking our own game toward deeper simulation, greater variety, procedural generation, and sandbox freedom.
I invite everyone interested to check out the game’s Steam page and add it to your wishlist if it catches your interest.