Testing Transport Fever 3: the writing’s on the wall for chock-a-block roads

Debora Pape

18/2/2026

Translation: Katherine Martin

With its new game Transport Fever 3, Urban Games has really pushed the limits of the tycoon concept. Even if you’re familiar with the mechanics, the game requires an extra dose of tactical skill.

Business simulator Transport Fever 3 is set to be released this year by Schaffhausen-based studio Urban Games. Even though the release date’s yet to be announced, the studio gave me the chance to try two of the game’s eight campaign missions and sandbox mode in the beta build.

Twelve hours with the game wasn’t enough to allow me to play through from 1900 to the 2000s, but I did gain some insights into the game. What I really loved was the new traffic management system and the tactical depth involved in developing cities.

A gentle start – with shrimp and music

The first mission of the campaign is intended as an intro to the game. You’re tasked with organising New Orleans’ famous Mardi Gras carnival parade in 1906. Job number one? To move building materials to a hotel construction site. This is where you find out about the game’s new landmark feature. In other words, massive, unique construction projects you need to supply with the right resources. Once you complete them, they provide a variety of buffs, beautifying your cities without the need for mods. One of the landmarks in the open world is Himeji Castle in Japan.

Once the hotel’s finished, you need to deliver shrimp there. You’ve also got to create public transport links with a neighbouring town so that musicians can be transported to New Orleans. The game guides you through basic functions step by step. If you complete optional bonus tasks, you’ll finish the mission with three stars, the top rating. As I expected, none of this is especially challenging. Apparently, the missions appearing later in the game are substantially more difficult, boosting replayability.

Food shortages and clogged toilets

The reality of that hits me in mission number four. In it, you’re the person in charge of making Woodstock 1969 a success. As the campsite grows at a chaotic rate, you’re confronted with food shortages and clogged toilets. Four narrator characters – a music producer, the local sheriff, a festival goer and an ageing advisor – provide the framework for the story.

It’s infused with the same wry humour we saw in Transport Fever 2 – think ukulele-induced toilet blockages and campers riding up tent walls on motorbikes. Wild times.

Gameplay-wise, the mission isn’t challenging – but it still makes me break out in a sweat. I’ll explain why in a sec. Like in previous missions, you start by building the festival stage using wood deliveries.

By Transport Fever logic, the campground functions as a city; the campers have needs you’re required to fulfil. These needs start out as tinned food and vegetables. Once you deliver them, your tent city grows. Woodstock needs to attract at least 500 visitors to be considered a success. If you manage to grow your campsite to 1,000 hippies, you’re awarded three stars. As a Transport Fever veteran, I’m keen to bag the best rating right away, of course.

The mission also involves removing waste water from the site and procuring medicines. How you fulfil these requirements is up to you. At the beginning of the mission, you have 40 million dollars in capital to spend as you see fit. There are already stations, tracks and harbours all over the map you can use for that.

And it’s not just the expensive vehicles and logistics hubs I’m forced to buy that are to blame. In 1969, a single truck costs as much as 850,000 dollars, while logistics platforms are much more expensive than in Transport Fever 2. Not only that, but you have to pay for infrastructure you didn’t even build. Every backwater train station, every metre of track, every faraway port counts as player property – and you need to foot the bill for it.

This is standard in Transport Fever. The problem is, I didn’t take it into account during the mission, because in the open-world section of the game, you only build stations if you’ll actually use them. In missions, on the other hand, they exist right from the start.

It was only once I was already in the red that I started half-heartedly and shamefully ridding the surrounding villages of their stations. By then, however, it was too late, and I was forced to continue playing without money. In other words, I couldn’t build a single new road, buy any new vehicles or put any trains on tracks.

I don’t think Urban Games factored these sorts of money worries into the mission. If they had, there’d be a better way of tackling them besides going on a demolition spree. With this in mind, I imagine the problem will be sorted in time for the game’s release.

Despite being almost five million dollars in debt, I completed the mission with three stars. I had the presence of mind to buy a bunch of trucks to transport all my goods before I went bankrupt. These trucks can be used whenever and wherever you need to boost transport capacity. When bad weather hit, for instance, I had to use them to schlepp blankets halfway across the map because there was no railroad available.

The most powerful tool is the lane management function, although it’s well hidden, way down in the road menu. At every junction, it allows you to define the turning direction for the vehicles in each lane. This means you can put annoying left-turners – the prime cause of traffic jams – in their place, and prohibit vehicles from crossing junctions. You might’ve come across the tool before as a Cities: Skylines mod. In Transport Fever 3, it works just as intuitively, making it much easier and more fun to optimise the flow of traffic.

There’s also a new traffic light phase management feature, which allows you to define exactly how long traffic lights stay green. When I gave it a go, I spotted something that needs tweaking. Although my problem junction only used two phases, the tool showed me six. I decided to delete the extra phases and adjust the relevant ones.

Emissions, a factor used in the previous games, is now divided into pollution and noise. Delayed deliveries and dissatisfied passengers are also more clearly defined as a negative growth factor than in Transport Fever 2. Passenger vehicles now have a comfort level that influences traveller satisfaction. As a result, your choices of vehicles requires a bit more tactical thinking. If a city has high pollution, for example, it might make sense to go for cleaner vehicles, even if they’re smaller or slower. These decisions give the tycoon aspect noticeably more depth, which, as a fan of the genre, I’m really into.

Reputation, a figure influenced by actions you take in the surrounding area, has been introduced as a completely new growth factor. If you demolish houses, your reputation goes down. The same applies to the use of terrain tools, for example when draining a swamp in a municipal area. While the reputation element is a good thematic fit, it’s very restrictive in its current form.

When I demolished two houses to widen a road, for instance, my reputation in one city dropped to zero. Although the number’s supposed to recover over time, such a drastic reputation loss seems like too high a penalty at this stage. You can’t adjust this in the game settings yet either.

New obligatory warehouses and optional supply lines

Urban Games has also worked on the logistics element of its new game. Rather than storing goods directly on platforms, you place them in separately built storage areas. This takes some getting used to, especially since the game doesn’t tell you how goods in the storage areas are then distributed to supply lines.

I really like the new ways of boosting production. In previous games, industries would automatically increase their production when they were well equipped. By contrast, in the new game, that’s in your hands. To boost production, you have to supply factories with workers and equipment such as tools. I’m not keen on the fact these supply lines only require a low capacity. Since this leads to a lower cycle frequency, the knock-on effects are longer waiting times and delayed goods. I’m not quite sure yet whether this negatively impacts city growth.

Transportation line management’s easier in Transport Fever 3. Waypoints can be added by simply clicking on the map instead of plastering the landscape with signs like in previous games. You can also buy vehicles in the line management tab itself, removing the need to go looking for a depot. One long overdue – and very welcome – addition is the capacity indicator for vehicles on the map, which allows you to see what’s being transported and where at a glance.

All that being said, not everything feels entirely smooth. Important line configurations are hidden behind undersized icons, some menus aren’t rigorously structured and the error messages aren’t helpful enough. These things are still being worked on. All in all, however, the game’s heading in a really good direction.

Debora Pape

Editor

Debora.Pape@galaxus.de

Feels just as comfortable in front of a gaming PC as she does in a hammock in the garden. Likes the Roman Empire, container ships and science fiction books. Focuses mostly on unearthing news stories about IT and smart products.

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