#roadcraft

I am Your Beast - NOW - Xbox Series, PC, Cloud

Hollow Knight: Silksong - Sep 4 - Consoles, PC, Cloud

Cataclismo - Sep 4 - PC

PAW Patrol World - Sep 10 - Consoles, PC, Cloud

Which is fairly rare, mostly Bethesda titles.

It was through it's own service, calling itself PROS, which also had some vehicle skins locked behind connecting an account to the service.

So I decided to look into that today, turned out it was called Prism Ray Online Service and had online services for multiple games.

I go to make an account-

And I get prompted with a saved username and password.

I'd never seen this website before in my life.

So, to begin with, your tarmac (asphalt) layers and cable layers have infinite tarmac/cable. You just cannot run out, point blank.

Your vehicles also don't require fuel, like they do in the previous games Mudrunner and Snowrunner. There is a "Fuel" resource, but it's only used to spawn your vehicles at a mobile respawn point, whereas the fixed respawn points are free. You earn fuel by completely objectives.

Then there's Sand, which your dump trucks use to terraform ground. Sand is also infinite, but your trucks can only carry so much and need to be within radius of a Sand Quarry to refill. Later vehicles I haven't unlocked include Large Dump Trucks which can refill smaller ones, and a Mobile Sand Quarry.

Then there's the four Storable Resources, which can be stored at a base and then spawned at any other base. You can earn these by completing objectives, and are usually used to restore facilities to working order, and to build bridges.

The first is Logs, which you get from harvesting trees. You just cut the trees down, and process the harvested tree into a Log with the same machine.

Meanwhile, Concrete Slabs, Steel Beams, and Steel Pipes all need you to get their reapective factories up and running. Then you can feed the factories Concrete Rubble and Scrap Steel, and they'll recycle it into the resource.

Concrete Rubble only comes in three different sizes of broken slab, and the Massive Caltrop. Meanwhile there's a wide variety of Scrap Steel, like broken fences, broken pipes and barrels; however, you can also recycle Abandoned Cars, Vans, Pickups and Tractors. Which I find kinda funny, you're literally stealing someone's car and melting it down for scrap.

We're now in Eastern Europe, helping a region recover from a... hurricane? Don't those form over oceans? Which Eastern Europe lacks?

And one of the towns in the area very clearly an American suburb named Redwood Bay.

Anyway, the game's introduced a new style of delivery mission. While previously you had to deliver objects by putting them in the back of one of your trucks and bringing them over, there's now missions where the game temporarily gives you a vehicle to haul it's cargo elsewhere.

But this means the game can choose the capability of the vehicle.

The first one of these I got was a semi-truck and trailer, and I was immediately struck with the realisation that this thing had absolutely zero off-road capability, and needed paved roads to work.

The Jock Premise:

It's about offroadin' in BIG TRUCKS.

The Nerd Premise:

It's about rebuilding infrastructure in areas devastated by disasters.

Fundamentally Flawed

Roadcraft is a really cool concept. Having sunk lots of time into Snowrunner and Death Stranding, the idea of a game that lets me rebuild an area, and the infrastructure to enable quicker and efficient deliveries is a promising one. But This game lacks real depth to its systems, and doesn't respect the players time.

Roadbuilding is pointless

I like the core gameplay loop - lay sand, flatten it, lay asphalt, roll it. I think it's a little basic, and I'll elaborate on that later. The big issue is it's pointless. The early game gives you offroad vehicles in pretty much every category. With the simplified vehicle simulation compared to Snowrunner, these are pretty much capable of navigating all areas of a map bar water obstacles or particularly large ditches. Yes it takes time to do so, but when compared to how much time it takes to lay road in a way that is nice to drive on (credit where it's due, is a satisfying skill to hone). You are only directly rewarded for fully laying road in limited sections, which the game does a kind of auto-smooth overanyway. There are routes you need to plot for autonomously driven vehicles, but you only need complete the first two steps - laying sand and roughly smoothing it, since the sand you lay isn't affected like regular terrain - heavy vehicles won't dig in and get stuck. So all you are left with is the satisfaction of being able to use a road you built yourself. But this isn't a delivery game like Snowrunner or Death Stranding or Euro Truck, so that satisfaction is only felt to a limited degree. Even then, the game gives you SAR vehicles that act as mobile respawn points, seemingly encouraging you to not even bother driving around on your nicely paved roads.

Bridge laying is likewise very simple. It's nice to have the capability to freely place them (at least in theory) but they're very simple to build - just bring an amount of one resource (the acquisition of which is fun, but slow). After which, they're done. You can't lay tarmac on concrete ones, to give a unified road surface, and bringing your roads to their edge, if you built them after, leaves an akward ditch that AI vehicles can get stuck on, and is just frustrating to drive on yourself.

Don't get me wrong, this core loop is satisfying, I've spent the vast majority of my near 60hrs playtime, laying road all over the first couple of maps, but it starts to suck after a while when you're continually faced with little to no benefit or reward for doing so.

Suggestions for how it could be improved

As mentioned, this system lacks much mechanical depth. I get this is quite an arcade-y game, so I don't expect a full construction simulation, but I think a few changes would go a long way

Adding different foundation materials - like gravel, for poor-drainage areas would go well

Adding concrete slabs down on routes that are designated to support heavy traffic, would tie in well with the scrap recovery gameplay loop.

Companion Systems

Logging - improved, but could be more

The logging system is an improvement, coming from Snowrunner. It's fun to chop-down trees, grind up the stumps and deliver them - to stockpiles or to make a handy bridge somewhere. You would think, that's a great way to deal with all the fallen trees that lie in your path across various roads and bits of townscape. But you can't turn those to lumber, only destroy them. Additionally, the system just stopping at logs is a bit dissapointing. It would be nice to add a step in the chain to turn them to planks for further uses.

Electricity - mechanically shallow

The cable laying system is mediocre. You connect point A to B and that's it. Thinking out the box and laying cable all over your map is discouraged by way the missions open up electrical sources and their destinations, broadly one source to every one or two destinations. Additionally, these aren't really revealed til part way in a mission chain. Meaning you have to lay cable in big ugly mounds off-road or alongside roads you took time to craft. If they were revealed earlier (or you looked them up) you could lay them ahead of time, and then cover with subsequent roadbuilding.

A nice improvement would be the capability to put in your own transformers or substations, or even place down foundations for different voltage overheads.

Convoy Systems - mixed bag

I like the convoy system this game has. Seeing routes I've put blood sweat and tears into smoothing and getting right, get used by a fleet of trucks is nice. It makes the world feel more alive. But damn do they suck. The routelaying system is a bit primitive, meaning trucks slip off the road or get stuck at unexpected points. The AI drivers don't stop for you the player, meaning you just have to wait for the route to complete, or hope you've timed your journey along a stretch of road right, lest the crash into you, and then the game tells you a route has failed and you have to restart it…

Vehicle Simulation is disappointing

As I touched on in the roadbuilding section, the vehicle simulation is pretty basic compared to Snowrunner. On the surface, that's fine - as plenty of people have pointed out, they're different styles of games, with different goals. But, it really takes away from the whole experience.

The lack of damage and fuel (at least in the default gamemode) adds to the lack of need to truly roadbuild, and means when it comes to systems like AWD and diff-lock, you might as well leave them on all the time, since there's not much if any, upside to turning them off. Low-range gear is effectively reduced to a generic "go slow" mode across your fleet, rather than having meaningfully different ways of driving the various vehicles at your disposal.

They also straight up sound worse than vehicles in Snowrunner and Expeditions.

The system of buying new vehicles for an "improved" version over a rusty counterpart is a little vague, and the system of buying a whole new vehicle just to get a version of the same truck, but with a crane or different bed sucks. Feels like it was only done to differentiate this game from Snowrunner & Expeditions. There's such a breadth of vehicles available, it would be great to be able to tweak them to better handle certain situations or aspects of the various gameplay loops.

The tracked vehicles are at least pleasant to drive and use. Hope to see them brought into other titles.

Closing thoughts

It's hard to tell if my complaints are valid criticizm, or if I'm really just wishing for a different game. Giving a thumbs down because I think this game could be, should be more. But I'm still going to keep playing it after this review, so make of that what you will.

I'm sure some of my complaints would be solved by hardcore mode, but I'm already a whole couple of maps in and I don't want to restart just for some minor QoL improvements.

I'm also sure some things I've complained about - particularly systems, will get a bit of attention in expansions. However, if Snowrunner is anything to go by, they'll be improved for that expansion or future maps only. Old maps won't be revisited by devs to make use of new systems, nor benefit from changes.

p.s. Kelly is annoying and feels like I'm being insulted as a player, and in a literal sense when she says some things. Wish I could turn her off.

Focus Entertainment y Saber Interactive anuncian el lanzamiento de la segunda expansión de RoadCraft: Reclaim Expansion. Esta añade nuevos contenidos a RoadCraft, incluyendo dos mapas y siete vehículos, así como una jugabilidad completamente nueva de demolición y salvamento. La expansión Reclaim añade dos mapas nuevos a RoadCraft. Tanto si recorres Centro Europa bajo la tormenta o el Norte de…