Developer Saber Interactive and publisher Focus Entertainment are no strangers to simulation-styled driving games with titles like MudRunner and SnowRunner under their belt. After last year’s relatively underwhelming take on the simulation series in the form of Expeditions: A MudRunner Game, the studio is back once again to make us drive through some of the most undrivable terrain in the world, but this time around, the scope has been expanded quite a bit. The developers clearly understand the nostalgic appeal of RoadCraft’s premise, fulfilling the childhood dream of operating massive construction vehicles to rebuild disaster-struck areas.
"Who hasn’t, after all, seen massive road rollers or cranes and imagined operating one of those things when they were younger? I certainly did."
Who hasn’t, after all, seen massive road rollers or cranes and imagined operating one of those things when they were younger? I certainly did. And RoadCraft basically tries to fulfil that promise on a grand scale. Where the previous similar titles by Saber Interactive tended to have more of a sandbox-styled design, encouraging players to try and figure out their own objectives to complete, RoadCraft on the other hand is much more focused.
The core gameplay in RoadCraft definitely feels like a huge improvement over what we last saw in games like SnowRunner and Expeditions: A MudRunner Game. There have been quite a few smaller changes made to how the driving works that act not only as refinements, but also a tremendous increase in the scope of each vehicles’ capabilities. While regular vehicles you might use, like scouting vans or trucks have obviously benefited from these refinements, the changes made have also opened up doors for more interesting ones to get added to the game.
RoadCraft offers a large variety in the different kinds of construction vehicles you can drive. This can range from something as relatively simple as a flatbed truck that can transport and dump sand, to more complex vehicles, like a trench digger that is used to lay down electrical wiring, bulldozers that can be used to move things out of the way, and even cranes that allow for more complex gameplay opportunities. All of these new vehicles feed into the core premise of RoadCraft – to rebuild.
For example, an area hit with storms now has roads that have been severely messed up. This is not only an inconvenience for those that might living in the area, but it’s also an unsuitable situation for you, since you’ll likely need to make use of those same roads to transport goods. RoadCraft has an entire road-building system that has you lay down sand, flatten it out, and then lay down and flatten out asphalt. Gameplay systems can get even more complex beyond that, with you having to figure out the optimal path to lay down underground electrical wires to make sure the whole area has working electricity.
The overall gameplay structure of RoadCraft is quite interesting; the objectives it gives you tend to be relatively simple, like transporting goods, plotting out a route for automated trucks to transport goods, or clearing out a section of road that has been cluttered by wrecked vehicles. Aside from the objective itself, however, you get little in the way of guidance on how you can actually go about doing these things. This is where some of the sandbox elements of the title’s predecessors come into play. You can switch between any vehicles you might have, either in your garage or out in the field, in a matter of seconds. At that point, it’s your own creativity and gumption that will get you across terrain that wouldn’t otherwise be traversable.
"RoadCraft has an entire road-building system that has you lay down sand, flatten it out, and then lay down and flatten out asphalt."
Later levels turn into navigation puzzles of sorts. Most of the vehicles at your disposal aren’t really too good at navigating through off-road routes, and your scouting van will be your primary method of exploring a new area once you get there. Objectives can often be quite far from where you start out, and figuring out how to get, for example, a loaded truck running over a dried-out river that offers little in the way of tyre traction is a puzzle in itself. In this example, I personally ended up making several trips to nearby sand quarries to fill the river bed out, before then flattening it all out with a bulldozer. While far from the ideal road, this at least gave me a way to get my truck across.
This gets especially fun and interesting because of how differently vehicles handle from each other. Your scouting van, for example, will be quick and agile even in the roughest of terrains, and its winch will help you out when you accidentally get stuck on a river by letting you pull yourself out by latching on to a nearby tree. The crane, on the other hand, is slow, lumbering, can’t really handle going off-road, and you have to be careful about how you’re using it to pick things up because it can definitely tip you over if you don’t balance the weight right or forget to use the anchors. These differences, as well as the fact that switching between vehicles takes just a second, means that there’s always plenty of variety available.
Generally speaking, the physics engine feels solid. Vehicles handle with a believable sense of weight and traction, and the way they respond to different surfaces reinforces this realism and even slight changes in elevation can make your heavily loaded truck struggle to maintain its already sluggish speed, adding a layer of challenge that feels grounded.
While RoadCraft can be a great, borderline soothing experience when playing solo, co-op multiplayer is where it truly begins to shine. Up to 4 players can play together, and there is plenty of freedom in how the players approach any given problem. Players can choose from a variety of objectives to ramp up their rebuilding efforts. At times, teaming up with friends on a shared goal can make the experience even more rewarding. In the previous example I gave about setting up a road, each player can take the responsibility of handling one of the several construction steps, and if things go well, the road will likely end up much better than if a single person were to try and handle it.
"Later levels turn into navigation puzzles of sorts."
Interestingly, aside from seeing the results of your hard work in action as you drive around after completing several objectives, RoadCraft doesn’t really have much in the way of a progression system. The closest you get to progression in this game is the ability to unlock new vehicles, and the option to move on to the next devastated zone. There aren’t any tedious skill trees to wade through, and while you can get better results at a faster pace if you use some of the more impressive vehicles in your garage, players will always have access to the bare minimum number of trucks and cars that might be needed for any given objective.
All of this is packaged up in an incredibly gorgeous looking game. The devastation of places by natural disasters has been beautifully realised, and overall, the high graphical fidelity is paired with some excellent optimisation. I was able to essentially max out the game’s visuals at 1440p, along with the 4K high-resolution texture pack on my system running on an AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D, 32 GB of DDR5 RAM, and an AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT GPU. There were, however, minor visual glitches here and there, largely to do with texture pop-in. These issues would resolve themselves in a matter of a couple of seconds, however, and aside from making a mudslide look like bizarre visual sludge, it never really got in the way of gameplay.
All in all, RoadCraft feels like the culmination of what Saber Interactive has been working on since MudRunner. Even though Expeditions: A MudRunner Game felt like a step back when compared to SnowRunner, RoadCraft feels like it builds on top of the foundations laid by all of these games that came before. Not only does it maintain the fun of driving through insanely dangerous terrain, it also opens up entirely new avenues of gameplay with the addition of more complex special-purpose vehicles that, while difficult to learn, add quite a bit to the whole process. All of this, along with the fact that a session of RoadCraft often feels quite rewarding make it an easy game to recommend for anyone who might enjoy some slow-paced, high-risk driving through dangerous terrain.
This game was reviewed on PC.
Expanded gameplay through complex vehicles is great; Playing in co-op essentially multiplies the amount of fun you’re having; Incredibly rewarding gameplay loop; Gorgeous visuals.
Minor technical issues like texture pop-in; Might be a bit too complicated or slow-paced for some.
