National Transit Is Live in Early Access
Yesterday — June 23, 2026 — the Early Access version of National Transit went live on Steam. It’s my first game, and writing this still feels a little unreal.
Where it started
Long before I wrote a line of code, I was a kid who loved atlases. I’d lie on the floor at home and turn whatever was around me into a city — an eraser was a building here, a pen cap a tower there — and in my head a whole place would take shape, street by street. Later I started drawing my own maps: countries and cities that didn’t exist anywhere except on the page.
That instinct never really went away.
Why a 2D transit game
Of course I played the city builders — Cities: Skylines and the rest. They’re wonderful games. But the 3D worlds, the intricate economic systems, the fixed building styles always made me feel a little boxed in. What I kept wanting was something with more of a sandbox feel — more room to imagine.
So one idea sat quietly in the back of my mind for years: a 2D transit game. You lay down roads, railways, waterways, and flight paths. You connect cities. And it grows until it looks like a real city map you’d find on Google — except the nation, the continent, all of it, is completely imaginary.
How it became real
For a long time it stayed just that — an idea. What finally changed was AI-assisted coding. The last couple of years have moved fast enough to put building a real game within reach for someone like me. After a little over two months of planning and programming, that idea is now something you can actually download and play.
A beginning, not a finish line
I want to be honest: this first version is rough. There are gaps and bugs. I’m a solo developer, without the resources or the energy for a big marketing push. But in the 24 hours since launch, I’ve already received several kind reviews and genuinely thoughtful suggestions from players — and that has been more encouraging than I can say.
From here, my focus is on making the game better: fixing what’s broken, filling in what’s missing, and earning the trust of more people who love this kind of world as much as I do.
Thanks for being here at the very start.
— RD/NationQ
Nairobi, Kenya