Until not long ago, there was a treaty line between London and Hell. Then Virginia became Lord Mayor.

You are invited to involve yourself in the formation of the Great Hellbound Railway Company. Aid in the construction of London’s new railway line to Hell’s Hinterlands, negotiate with the Tracklayers’ Union (via its fearsome representative, Furnace Ancona), and build out the line to Ealing Gardens and beyond!

Building a railway involves some timed elements. It cannot be done in a day. Here’s an idea of what you can expect at the new railway stations, to whet your appetite while you wait:

Ealing Gardens: Visit one of London's more Rubbery neighbourhoods, and invest in its further development. If you've been looking for a good butcher, you can set one up here
Jericho Locks: Travel the waterways that link London and Hell
The Magistracy of the Evenlode: The last outpost of the Constables

Additional stations will come later in the year.

Persons of Some Importance who have a specialisation will find the Railway opportunity in their deck; look for Advertisements of a New Venture. This update also introduces the changes to the Persuasive level cap, so you will require 175 Persuasive to begin.

What’s next in Fallen London?

We turned ten years old in January, so strictly speaking we’ve been celebrating our birthday for six months. It’s time we gave up the indulgence, as fun as it’s been! The conclusion to all four ambitions, Parabolan Base Camp, University Lab, Paleontology, new map, the brand new Whitsun festival and Railway have kept you - and us - very busy since January!

Now the anniversary festivities are over, we’re going to relax the pace for the latter half of the year. That isn’t a pace we can sustain even when Fallen London is our main focus (we started work on the anniversary updates months in advance). Also, we are now working on two new games. One of these is set in Fallen London. We’ll have more to say about them later in the year!

But also, the global events of the last few months have affected the rate at which we can work. We’ll be working remotely for the foreseeable future. Those of us with children are often working different or reduced hours, to handle childcare commitments while schools and nurseries are closed. In these circumstances, hitting our anniversary commitments was sometimes a struggle. Some people did overtime to make that happen.

It’s important to us that Failbetter be a good workplace for people with families, and that we don’t create situations in which people need to put in extra work out of hours. So we’ll need to find a pace that fits what we can do, given how the world is now. It’s possible that might mean releasing certain things later than we said we planned to; if it does, we hope you’ll understand.

That said, we’ll still be working on many more substantial updates for Fallen London. In the past, we’ve sometimes neglected it while our focus has been on other projects. We didn’t want to do that again, so we’ve planned accordingly and made some additional hires.

We’d like to thank you all for celebrating with us. The number of people who’ve returned to the game or rediscovered what they loved about it has been astonishing; your support and enthusiasm has meant a lot to us.