About
Transport Tycoon is a business simulation game designed by Chris Sawyer for MS-DOS, published by MicroProse in November 1994, in which the player runs a transport company moving passengers and goods by road, rail, sea, and air using an isometric 2D view. Simutrans is a free, open-source transportation simulator where players build and manage a transport company moving passengers, mail, and goods by rail, road, ship, and air, growing cities and industries by connecting them. It ships with no original assets — visuals come from separate, freely available graphics sets called "paksets" (Pak64, Pak128, and others) that each offer a different art style, region, and difficulty level — and supports online, LAN, and single-player play with Steam Workshop integration.
How it differs from the original
Unlike Transport Tycoon's original fixed MicroProse-era graphics, Simutrans lets players choose between multiple community-made graphics packages covering different regions, tile sizes, and difficulty levels, and adds online multiplayer support.
Getting started
Simutrans can be downloaded from its official website, Steam, or Linux package managers; on first launch you choose a pakset (graphics package) to play with, and multiplayer games can be joined on public servers or hosted privately.
History
Simutrans was originally written by Hansjörg "Hajo" Malthaner from 1997 until around 2004, when he stepped back from development; a team led by Markus "Prissi" Pristovsek has continued the project since 2005.