Halfway between Arc Raiders and Rust, survival shooter Enginefall fixes my biggest concern with a new playtest, live now

The breakout success of Arc Raiders proves that there's plenty of room for the 'will they, won't they (betray me)' style of multiplayer action it brings to the table. Enginefall is the next offering to play on this format, and I'm already captivated by its design, which transports the action onto giant, moving trains, and feels a little more closely woven in with survival games like Rust and Ark. Developer Red Rover Interactive has just kicked off its latest playtest, which solves my one real question mark with its first showing, and you can apply to join on Steam right now.

Everything in Enginefall takes place on these colossal trains. Your base starts out as a simple Dagger shuttle, though you're eventually able to upgrade into a full Marauder train with a sprawling chain of living quarters, workshops, gun decks, and so on. From there, you leap across to other vehicles to hunt for loot, materials, and supplies. The ultimate goal is what's on board the vast Titan trains, but the most valuable resources will require you to fight your way through numerous carriages to reach the first-class areas where the best rewards await.

All the survival game hallmarks are here, from resource gathering and crafting to building all manner of weapons, armor, tools, and structures. Perhaps you'll set up an on-the-go mini base that allows you to respawn or store supplies. Or maybe you'll grab what you can and dive back off the vehicle to the safety of your Dagger, unlocking new elements of your skill tree to enable better upgrades and make more powerful gear.

But with up to 75 players scavenging the Titan trains at one time, and servers that can persist for hours once you matchmake into them (though you'll likely want to extract sooner), carefully navigating the social element of Enginefall is essential. Perhaps you can convince other squads to work with you and share the load; maybe you're already plotting how to betray them at the last moment and take everything for yourself.

The big change for Enginefall's second playtest is cutting the squad size down from five players to three. While I appreciated the ambition, trying to get that many people together at once can be rather awkward, and even when you do it ends up feeling like too many cooks in the kitchen if you want to coordinate and execute a heist. Plus, as Red Rover remarks, "fewer players per team equals more opportunities for betrayal."

The new build also has a streamlined tutorial, designed to help you learn the fundamentals of gathering, crafting, building, and navigating the environment. The menus have been given a visual overhaul, both to improve immersion and to provide easier access to the most important information at any given time, and there's a fresh set of cosmetics to deck out your mobile base aboard the Dagger train.

The second Enginefall playtest runs from Friday December 12 until Tuesday December 16. The full game is set to release in 2026. You can sign up to take part on Steam by clicking the 'request access' button. I've been pretty impressed so far; don't let the train theming put you off, because some of the environments you'll encounter on these barreling bastions of steel get pretty diverse and spectacular.