OpenLoco

Last reviewed Sep 13, 2026 · 635 words

You need a copy of Chris Sawyer's Locomotion before OpenLoco does anything. It is an open-source engine, not an open-source game: the code has been rewritten from the 2004 original into C++ and released under the MIT licence, but the graphics, sounds and music are still the publisher's, and you supply them from your own install. Locomotion is sold on Steam and GOG for a few dollars and goes on sale often; buy it, point OpenLoco at the folder, and you have the 2004 game running natively on a 2026 machine with a proper windowed mode, modern resolutions, and bugs fixed that the original never got.

What a self-hoster does with it

Nothing server-shaped, and I want to be direct about that because the games category on this site is mostly dedicated servers. OpenLoco is a desktop application. There is no headless mode, no Docker image worth running, no web UI. The reasons it belongs in the catalogue are that it is a genuinely community-run open-source project you can build from source, and that it sits in the same family as OpenTTD and OpenRCT2, both of which people do host. If you came here looking for a transport-sim server, OpenTTD is the answer, and there is more on that below.

Getting it running

Releases on GitHub ship as a zip for Windows, a tarball for Linux, and a build for macOS. Unpack, run the binary, and on first launch it asks for the Locomotion install directory. On Linux with the Steam version the path is usually ~/.steam/steam/steamapps/common/Locomotion; with GOG it is wherever you unpacked the installer, and the game runs fine from a folder copied off a Windows machine. SDL2 and a working OpenGL stack are the only real dependencies, and 512 MB of RAM is plenty. Building from source is a standard CMake project and takes about 10 minutes on a modern laptop, which is worth doing once if you want the fixes between tagged releases.

Multiplayer is early

The catalogue is right to list multiplayer as limited. The original Locomotion had a two-player LAN mode, and OpenLoco's rewrite of the network layer is still a work in progress: it works for a couple of players over a direct connection, there is no server browser, no dedicated headless host, and desyncs happen. Compare that with OpenTTD, which has run internet multiplayer with a proper dedicated server for two decades. If the appeal of self-hosting a game is a persistent world your friends join at any hour, OpenLoco cannot give you that today, and I would not plan around the roadmap.

Where the project is

About 1,903 stars and steady commits. The team spent years translating the original x86 assembly into C++ function by function, and the game stayed playable through the entire process because the original binary was loaded alongside and functions were replaced one at a time. Recent work is on the remaining assembly, the network code, and quality-of-life fixes the original never received. It moves slower than OpenRCT2, which has more contributors, but it is not abandoned and the release notes are candid about what is and is not done.

What I'd do

Buy Locomotion on sale, install OpenLoco on the desktop you play on, and enjoy a game that never ran this well. If you want something to run on the homelab, set up an OpenTTD dedicated server instead; it is free, needs no original files, runs in well under 512 MB, and has the multiplayer OpenLoco is still building. Run both if you like transport sims; they scratch different itches, and OpenLoco's is the one with Chris Sawyer's road vehicles and hills.