Everything breaks and entropy always wins, which is all very nice for the nihilists, but the rest of us are trying to get things done. Inevitable deterioration is a problem and in the long run all is dust and ruin, but the long run can be pushed relentlessly into the future seeing as people are basically tool-using monkeys that have gotten very good at making things as they could be rather than accepting them for how they are. When things break we fix them, and while it’s a lot easier when the broken things are small enough to pick up and repair by hand, we’ve also got the tools to work on the damages when it’s the entire landscape in need of repair.
Picking Up the Pieces of a Broken Landscape
RoadCraftis the latest spin-off of theSnowRunner/MudRunnerseries, a giant Tonka-truck sandbox adventure across maps that have been decimated by natural disasters. Floods, earthquakes, hurricanes and more have swept across the world necessitating a disaster recovery company to deploy its arsenal of heavy equipment to the field, clearing debris and repairing the landscape to make it usable and liveable again. As the name implies this is mostly done by road, although a lot of the time unless it’s vital infrastructure, the definition of “road” is flexible. Two-lane and tarred is nice when you may get it, but a couple of well-worn ruts through the woods will do just fine if you only need to travel it a time or two.
Review: SnowRunner
While SnowRunner has a few quirks here and there, overall it’s a fantastic game of exploration and brute-force driving.
Starting off with a jeep or pickup from the scout class, the first job is laid-back prep-work for a pending storm. The scout vehicles are low-powered cars built to survey the landscape, complete with a winch on the front to pull themselves out of trouble. Journeying from one checkpoint to the next, a few rusty vehicles turn up that are functional but hardly in tip-top shape, starting off the fleet with a good variety of adequate equipment. Trucks carry whatever their beds can hold, cranes load up trucks, road-building equipment makes broken terrain drivable, loggers drop trees and grind down stumps, and the special class might do anything from laying down wire that connects areas with electricity to acting as a mobile base allowing a more convenient recall of stuck vehicles. The “Road…” inRoadCraftis the infrastructure of a region, but you’ll be doing far more than simply laying down stretches of tar.
For example, disasters leave behind all sorts of rubble, mostly steel and concrete, but also a fair amount of miscellaneous junk as well. Steel factories can recycle metal scrap into beams and pipes, while the concrete factory takes in rocky rubble and gives out fresh slabs. Different repair jobs throughout the region use these in different ways, such as the huge pipes for broken pipelines. This is where cranes and cargo trucks come in handy and initially you’ll have one of each to play with. Which isn’t, as it turns out, all that convenient, so one of the first of many vehicle purchases should most likely be the crane-with-cargo-bed vehicle, the Mule.
Each vehicle has its own special controls, whether that’s for a crane, winch, asphalt, etc, and they all tend to follow a standardized layout for ease of use. The Mule’s crane works almost identically to one of the giant cranes at the port or the grabbing bucket of a stationary one in the junkyard and it doesn’t take long to adapt to any new piece of equipment that may show up. Which isn’t to say that some equipment doesn’t have individual quirks, like the dumptrucks for laying down sand when fixing a road.
Building roads is a four-step process, each one requiring its own piece of machinery. First up is the dump truck, which in theory lays down a strip of sand to cover up whatever mud or cracks are making the terrain impassable. Raising the bed so it comes out at a steady pace rather than a huge pile is a bit of a trick, though, and about the only action in the game requiring real technique. The truck only holds so much sand and once empty it needs to be refilled, so while it’s technically possible to pave the entire map, it would take a whole lot of back-and-forth to the sandpit to accomplish.
Review: Expeditions: A Mudrunner Game
Expeditions has a lot of tidying up to do to become what it should be, but there’s a wonderfully rewarding game in there once you learn its quirks.
Once the sand is down the bulldozer comes next, used to flatten it into a nice, smooth surface. Technically this is all you really need at this point, and for a lot of situations you can walk away and call it good enough, but there are missions that specify a need for a fully tarred road. After the bulldozer comes the paver, and finally the steam roller to flatten everything down and finish the job. It’s worth noting that those last two are just too slow to drive everywhere they need to be, so yet another different vehicle comes into play in the form of an equipment transporter. The first one carries one vehicle at a time, but it doesn’t take long to get an epic behemoth that carries both, and it’s way more fun to drive than something so basic ought to be.
Anything Can Multitask with a Bit of Experimentation
Just because a piece of equipment is classified for a single purpose doesn’t mean it should only do the one job, though. The bulldozer flattens sand nicely and while it’s classified as road-building equipment, the ability to shove things around is every bit as important. Leftover rubble can be recycled, sure, but the crane-truck-depot cycle wouldn’t hold up for the sheer volume of wreckage on hand, and there are scenarios where just bulling on through the clutter doesn’t work. One of the common mission types is to set up a supply convoy between two points, and while the automated drivers do their best, they don’t tend to have the same powerful vehicles and good judgement of the player. Starting with two highlighted points on the overhead map, you’ll need to plot any course you like between them with no restrictions other than how patient you may feel in making it drivable. A little bit of flattened sand will frequently take care of the worst of it, but using the bulldozer to knock stray rocks off the road can frequently be the difference between a successful route and a not-too-bright truck driver skidding into a ravine.
Sometimes ravines are unavoidable, though, and this is where the cement plates come into play. Bridges can be built anywhere, so long as you’ve got the necessary components and a good route to carry them to the construction zone. Sometimes bridges are vital, a necessary part of completing a mission objective, while others are for shortcuts or even just accessing a point of interest with no other objective than to see what’s there.RoadCraft’s maps are decently sized and have plenty of gorgeous scenery for those who want to go exploring, and if sometimes the quest to see what’s out there involves wrangling an overloaded Mule through rocky paths running along a cliff’s edge, it’s not like the disaster clean-up won’t wait a bit.
RoadCraftis the latest spin-off of theSnowRunner/MudRunnerseries, a giant Tonka-truck sandbox adventure across maps that have been decimated by natural disasters.
LikeSnowRunnerbefore it, and evenExpeditionsonce you got used to its very different style,RoadCraftis a game of slow construction-machinery satisfaction rather than adrenaline-fueled action. Everything is slow and stately, there are no time limits to speak of and going downhill with a tailwind in the fastest vehicles might see you nearing thirty whole miles per hour. The harshest fail-state is needing to recall a vehicle back to base when it gets stuck or rolls over, and with no fuel or damage modeling, you can beat on them as much as you’d like without worrying about the budget. A lot of the more sim-like elements have been stripped out, in fact, such as different components to upgrade vehicles, which makes a kind of sense seeing as there are so many different types but still feels like a loss. No fuel is understandable seeing as there can be so many different trucks deployed to the field at any given moment, but no damage feels maybe a bit too generous.
Closing Comments:
RoadCraftis a fantastic new entry in the-Runnerseries, distinct from the others, but still recognizably part of the library. The sheer variety of tasks make every moment a choice of what you feel like doing next, and while the amount of environmental devastation can feel overwhelming, once you settle into a “one problem at a time” mindset, it’s just a matter of taking care of the thing in front of you while the rest waits for later. As each new map is slowly uncovered more and more options open up, from exploring the trails to clearing roads, hunting for scrap, tackling side-missions and in general seeing what kind of trouble you can get up to next. Being able to tackle it all multiplayer means the amount of work can get much more manageable, but even in single player it’s just a satisfying progression of completing one problem, then another, then another. It’s also worth noting that the disasters are completely removed from human consequence, so it’s easy to sink into the sandbox with no bad feelings about just wanting to make the trucks go VROOM! Disaster struck and the world is broken, butRoadCraftlets you rebuild it one satisfying step at a time.
Version Reviewed: PC
RESHAPE THE AFTERMATHAs the leader of a company specialized in restoring sites devastated by natural disasters, use your construction machinery to restart the local industry. Clear debris and faulty equipment, rebuild roads and bridges damaged by weather, and much more!CLEAR, SUPPLY, REBUILDYou run a disaster recovery company, specialized in restoring sites devastated by natural disasters. Numerous tasks await you and your heavy machinery as you work to restart the local industry: clearing debris, replacing faulty equipment, rebuilding roads and bridges damaged by bad weather, deploying resource convoys to produce new reconstruction materials, and much more!WELCOME TO NEXT-GEN SIMULATIONExperience a new generation of simulation with the brand new engine developed by Saber Interactive, the creators of MudRunner and SnowRunner. Handle each object with realistic physics, accounting for their mass and size. Interact with elements like sand, wood, and asphalt. Reshape the terrain and ease the movement of your vehicles thanks to your newly-built roads.EXPAND YOUR GARAGEEach machine has its own behavior. Use your bulldozer to clear obstructions, your heavy transporter to carry multiple vehicles, or your fixed or gantry cranes to lift containers and equipment. Reconnect a factory to the power grid with your cable layer, lay down hot asphalt with your paver, and flatten it with your roller to create your own roads. Unlock over 40 vehicles as you progress through the story-driven campaign. Visit your garage to customize your machines with your company’s logo and repaint them with your personalized colors.OPERATE WORLDWIDEDisasters have caused chaos, cutting off access to many affected areas. You are the last hope to brave these extreme conditions. Whether in the mountains, the heart of the desert, or by the sea, your expertise is needed around the globe! Explore 8 unique maps, each 4 km², with their own biomes and buildings. Choose your itinerary through abandoned factories, submerged dams, or out-of-service solar fields. Search every corner to achieve your goals, and secure new contracts to earn additional funds and XP.ORGANIZE, RECYCLE, AUTOMATECollect remnants of wood, steel, and cement and transform them into components in your recycling plants, every piece of debris can be used for reconstruction! Supply factories and sand quarries to produce resources in bulk. As the operations manager, guide your transport trucks by plotting their routes on the map and ensure no obstacles block their way!REBUILD TOGETHERThe world of RoadCraft offers a multitude of activities. Why not complete them with your friends? Set up a co-op session for up to 4 players. Divide tasks or focus together on a single objective. Combine your strengths and ingenuity to find solutions, even the most unexpected ones.
