Way back in those cloudy years that all blurred into one as Covid was raging, a lot of people turned to video games to get them through (which did, in turn, lead to the global semiconductor shortage, as electronics manufacturers hoovered up all the chips left over by carmakers cancelling everything).
This led to a boom in “cozy” games – simple little life simulators with bright graphics and cheery, relaxed, low-stakes gameplay – with Nintendo’s Animal Crossing exploding in popularity as people turned to happy little cartoon animals as an alternative to real life.
However, that wasn’t the only option, and for the more car-minded gamer getting by in lockdown, there was the mighty SnowRunner.
An evolution of the fantastic Spintires/MudRunner off-road games with brutally realistic physics and mind-blowing real-time terrain deformation, SnowRunner was the ultimate cozy game for people like me who couldn’t really get into Animal Crossing because the game wouldn’t let you punch that smug, predatory little Racoon bastard Tom Nook in his irritating fuzzy face.
I whiled away many lockdown hours slowly traversing hazardous terrain, hauling huge loads through mud, snow and swamps, over rocks and mountains, and between towering trees, all with the almost inevitable possibility the one tiny misjudgment could see hours of slow, careful rock crawling end in a catastrophic rollover mere metres from the final destination.
And it was utterly awesome. Still is, to be honest.
While I struggled to get into Expeditions, the more exploration-based spin-off to SnowRunner (there were just too many poorly-defined goals for me, something that all the MudRunner games have suffered from, but that Expeditions took to a new extreme…), the latest edition has sucked me in all over again, without the need for a global pandemic raging outside my closed doors, and all because it allows you to do one thing the other games never did – build your own roads.
Where the aim of all previous Spintires/MudRunner games was to forge your own path across hostile terrain, crawling through mud and over rocks, smashing through trees and bush, and occasionally drowning your vehicle in a river crossing you misjudged the depth of, RoadCraft tasks you with paving over all that.
While the game generally only requires you to build a road wide enough to get a supply convoy along in one direction, the temptation go far bigger is ever-present.
There is a vague storyline that ties it all together, but the main aim is to aid in the recovery of areas devastated by natural disasters by getting the power up and running again, establishing supply lines and clearing debris. And, you guessed it, the best way to do this is to rebuild the roads.
You start with a basic array of crappy old rusty machinery, adding a front-end loader, dump truck, roller and asphalt spreader to your initial scout vehicle during the first few hours of the game, but it doesn’t take long before you start racking up more specialised machinery, like a tree-felling crane), log-hauling forwarder, log loader, stump grinder and the like.
RoadCraft has abandoned the traditional upgrade path, where you can add more powerful engines, more capable tyres and raised suspension (as well as custom liveries), instead replacing this with more capable non-rusted versions of the machinery that you can purchase with the profits of your endeavours.
Either way, you soon progress from crawling across the devastated terrain in your scout vehicle – initially a choice between the Armiger Thunder (a non-licensed Land Rover Defender knock off) or the Minuteman K350 (an equally non-licensed Ford F-150/F-250 knock off) – to clearing trees and paving vast swathes of land simply because you can.
Seriously; while the game generally only requires you to build a road wide enough to get a supply convoy along in one direction, the temptation go far bigger is ever-present.
While you have to do the grind to complete the objectives, the hours you can spend meticulously building roads – the thing the game is named for, after all – are immensely satisfying.
Early in the second campaign I decided to build a small road crossing a slushy swamp area because it would be a handy shortcut – this quickly ballooned into hours spent building a spectacular dual carriageway-sized highway that was insanely satisfying to finish.
Later in the campaign, the game then insisted I build a road in almost the same place but refused to recognise the mighty construction I had previously completed as it wasn’t in quite the right place.
Rather than being frustrating, this was a source of utter joy to me, as it gave me an excuse to expand on the already sprawling huge road and turn it into something more akin to a mall parking lot. In the middle of a swamp.
The actual process of building is immensely satisfying as well, being an extensively simplified version of the real thing that sees you first dumping a generous layer of sand (seriously; dump more than you think you will need, because you will ALWAYS need more) as a base, which you then compact down with a dozer or blade-equipped front-end loader.
Then you lay the tarmac over the top before rolling it to get the final product. This rarely goes according to plan, so you often need to either make repairs or simply live with a jagged bit of rough surface in the middle of your new road, something I just can’t bring myself to do as “utter overkill” is the only way I know how to build roads, it seems.
While thrashing a fast car down a well-built road in a video game is still more fun, it turns out that there is little that is as satisfying as building that road in the first place. And who would’ve thought that?
But it’s not just roads, as RoadCraft also asks you with rebuilding bridges, laying power cables and even clearing areas using massive tower, gantry and bulk-handler cranes. While this is all very satisfying, it quickly becomes repetitive, as does the incessant loop of collecting scrap to recycle into the materials you need for construction of everything that isn’t a road.
But while you have to do the grind to complete the objectives, the hours you can spend meticulously building roads – the thing the game is named for, after all – are immensely satisfying.
As is the initial exploration using your scout vehicle to open up the maps and unlock objectives.
While the off-roading has attracted criticism from the hardcore MudRunner fans thanks to RoadCraft’s simplified control system – winches are a lot less useful, while damage and fuel use are both entirely absent – the basic physics are excellent and the simplified operation makes it both far easier for newcomers to get to grips with, as well as allowing more experienced mud runners to just enjoy the process without having to constantly watch the fuel gauge or worry about the ever-degrading state of your vehicle.
While the lack of a manual transmission is annoying, RoadCraft is ultimately a road building sim rather than a true sequel to its hardcore off-roading sim predecessors.
As such, the on-road behaviour of the vehicles has been vastly improved, with faster, more responsive steering and far superior weight transfer physics, meaning that there is far less wild lurching around on sealed and hard-packed roads in the faster vehicles (‘fast’ is a very relative term here though…).
While the gameplay loop is ultimately limited and repetitive, the basic cozy game-core of RoadCraft is compelling – the exploration is fun and often throws up unexpected results, while the actual road building is genuinely surprising fun.
While thrashing a fast car down a well-built road in a video game is still more fun, it turns out that there is little that is as satisfying as building that road in the first place. And who would’ve thought that?
