Three million copies. That is how many units of Barotrauma, the submarine survival game from Finnish studio FakeFish, have been sold since its initial commercial release in 2019. It is a number that buys a studio significant goodwill — and sets an uncomfortable benchmark for whatever comes next. So when FakeFish announced Frostrail, its follow-up horror survival shooter set aboard a steam-powered train trudging through a frozen wasteland, the natural question was: is this worthy of the pedigree, or is it coasting on a reputation?
Early trailers offered grounds for scepticism. The initial reveal, shown at the Triple-I Initiative in April 2025, sketched what looked like a familiar genre loop: ride the train, hop off, scavenge supplies, shoot ice-encrusted enemies, scramble back before you freeze. Competent, perhaps, but hardly the kind of high-concept misery that made Barotrauma a word-of-mouth phenomenon among players who enjoy organised chaos and the constant threat of catastrophic failure.
The new gameplay overview shown at IGN Fan Fest 2026 on 26 February changes the conversation.
The footage, which can be watched on the official YouTube channel, pulls back the permafrost to reveal something genuinely unexpected: subterranean catacombs thick with vegetation, ancient architecture that would not look out of place in a classic Tomb Raider title, and horror that resists easy explanation. Players enter some of these buried spaces through the shells of abandoned churches. The atmosphere is less "frozen zombie shooter" and more cosmic weird fiction, which is precisely the register Barotrauma occupied so effectively in its underwater setting.
Lead Designer Ez Jämsen put it plainly in a statement released alongside the trailer. The new footage, he said, highlights "the core loop of scavenging, brutal combat, and upgrading your train, along with a stronger, more refined art direction featuring new environments and weapon models that deepen the atmosphere of desolation." That is corporate-speak for: the game looks considerably better than it did ten months ago, and the studio knows it.
The World They Have Built
The lore underpinning Frostrail is, on paper, rich. The Steam page describes a once-great empire reduced to frozen ruin by its Emperor's pact with a force called the Void, its ruins now stalked by creatures called Revenants and worse. Players take the role of Penitent Gardeners, a quasi-religious order travelling aboard an armoured, steam-powered locomotive, the Eden Engine, on a mission of purification across the desolation.
The train is not merely a transport vehicle. It functions as the player's mobile base, their only reliable source of warmth, and the thing they must keep running at all costs. As reported by Games Press, players can gather resources to craft weapons and equipment, and upgrade the locomotive itself, adding new carriages and improving the engine's capabilities as they push further into the frozen world. FakeFish founder and CEO Aku Jauhiainen has previously described the progression as a combination of raw speed and expanded capacity: a faster, heavier, more formidable machine that evolves alongside the players aboard it.
The co-op element supports up to four players online, though the game is openly marketed for solo play as well. This matters. Barotrauma was, at its heart, a game about crew dynamics and the particular kind of stress that comes from depending on other human beings not to flood the submarine. Frostrail appears to be attempting something more accessible: a game that works whether you have a full squad or you are the lone engineer keeping the engine alive at three in the morning.
The Studio Behind the Bet
FakeFish was established in 2014 by five university friends in Turku, Finland, and has since grown to around 30 people. For a studio of that size, the ambition of Frostrail is considerable: an open-world first-person shooter with survival crafting systems, base building, co-op infrastructure, and what appears to be a meaningful single-player experience. The game is being published by Shiro Unlimited, the publishing arm associated with French studio Shiro Games, whose own catalogue includes Northgard and Wartales.
FakeFish says it expects Frostrail to remain in early access for approximately one year, with the exact timeline depending on player feedback and how the studio's development ambitions progress. Given how long Barotrauma spent in early access before its 1.0 release in March 2023, that estimate is probably best treated as a rough guide rather than a firm promise. Still, the studio's track record with community-driven development is genuine: Barotrauma built its audience precisely by listening to players and iterating openly.
Here's the thing: the survival genre is genuinely crowded right now. The train-based survival sub-genre alone has, by some counts, a half-dozen entries either in development or recently released. Whether Frostrail can distinguish itself through its underground mystery elements and accumulated atmosphere, rather than merely its locomotive gimmick, is the real question the new trailer raises. The footage suggests the answer might be yes. Confirmation will have to wait until early access opens.