Sidetrack — Tiny Trains for Your DesktopSidetrack — Tiny Trains for Your Desktop

Sidetrack is a tiny railway town that lives in a strip along the bottom (or the top) of your desktop, above the taskbar and under your other windows. Get on with your day: the trains keep running, the cargo keeps paying, and whenever you look down there is a small town going about its business. Nothing can go wrong, there is no timer, and the line keeps earning while you are away.

Run the railway

• Idle, at your own pace. Stations make cargo and your trains carry it down the line for coins. Blow the whistle of a train for a few extra coins, send one off as an express for double pay, or just leave it all running.

• Buy and build. Wagons for every cargo, steam, diesel and electric engines, faster track, passing sidings for more trains, longer platforms, bigger warehouses and station lights for the night shift.

• Contracts and a daily request. Each district has a chain of contracts that opens new stations, new stock and, in the end, the next district along the line. Once a day one of the town's regulars asks you for a small favour.

• One long line, five districts. The Countryside, the Harbour with its tides, the Mountain with its steep hills, the City where only electric trains may run, and the endless Grand Terminus, all joined by one river and one road.

• The Museum. Retire a finished district's railway for tokens, permanent perks and decorations, then run it again.

• Real offline progress. Close the game and come back up to 8 hours later (12 or 24 with Museum perks) to what your trains earned while you were away.

• Focus blocks. Set a 15 to 90 minute block, get on with your work, and a bonus express arrives when it ends.

Live in the town

• A town that grows with your railway. Every station you open and every contract you finish puts up new buildings, more people on the pavements and more cars on the road.

• Your cargo goes somewhere. Vans drive your deliveries to the shops and workshops that want them, porters carry them where there are no roads, and passengers walk from home to the station and back.

• Town projects. Pay for street lamps, flower beds, a cherry avenue, a market stall, a station monument and the restoration of each district's great landmark.

• Things to find and click. Ring the shrine bell, feed the koi, pet the station cat, find the day's missing cat on a rooftop, spot a rare train passing through, and pick up the things people leave behind.

• Look inside. The bakery, the corner store, the bar, the arcade, the school, the railway office and the bath house open up to show their rooms, and you can look inside the carriages of your trains.

• Day and night. Windows light up at dusk and go dark one by one, the cats come out, the trains run with their headlights on, fireflies drift over the ponds, and now and then it rains in the Harbour.

• Look around. Travel along the whole line with the arrows, or look up at the town beyond the river.

Made for your desktop

• Sits above the taskbar and under your windows. Choose the monitor, the top or bottom edge, the height and the size it is drawn at.

• Easy on your computer: the strip runs at a low frame rate, rests while you play a fullscreen game, and dims for the night when you are away.

• A radio with each district's own music or solo piano after dark.

• A full guide behind its own button, and no pop-ups telling you what to do.

• 69 achievements and postcards of your town to keep.

• No microtransactions and no DLC.