RoadCraft review: Streamlined building biz beset by bumbling AI Bobs

Friday nights are approaching 10pm.

There are some muddy hills. Along the way, the tires are rotating helplessly, two trucks carrying the goods they need to deliver to a shed about half the map. I sigh and hand the beans to the bulldozer/cargo truck. As a 14-wheeled mass, we begin to craze the gentle slopes. This would be easy to pick if the Ai-Man carrier glued to the scoop on my front had off-road capabilities.

They don’t. There is no driving skills to make up for that. If they hit obstacles in the course of the route, I plotted for them. Small rocks terrify them, and happeningly sharp is a prohibition of their existence, sometimes seemingly lying around for laughs. They need me. When I’m not a builder bob, I bob the babysitter.

What I just explained is one of the main things that set up RoadCraft. This is the latest entry in Saber Interactive’s Off-Road Sims series from its sturdy, outdoor siblings. These games, Mudrunner, Snowrunner, and last year’s expeditions were generally about you – players are stuck when they reach A to B, go through an untouched environment and ruin it.

I regularly and slightly salkyrie, comparing these games to the driving equivalent of Fromsoft’s boss butler. Relentless adventures about ultimate success gained through overwhelming skills and luck are usually preempted by the failed crap that gradually pushes people who have not yet taken the chunk of chunks in the direction of doing the right thing.

When you’re behind the wheel, Roadcraft is far the most hardcore title in the streaming of that gameplay loop that Saber has made at this point. Please don’t get me wrong. There are still many ways to ruin the learning curve and what needs to be reset. However, it’s a simplified studio in creating games that focus on construction, maintenance and logistics management rather than straight hauling and exploring conquering frontiers.

When working, you don’t need to pay attention to your fuel gauge or repair it if it hits a wall. Roadcraft’s fleet will never be fully fueled and destroyed, unless you roll, sink, or otherwise wedge yourself. This, and the lack of detailed upgrade systems for the resulting vehicles, can be a bit frustrating for hardcore haulers, but you can see why Saber chose it.

The vehicle you handed over this time is generally much more specialized towards the very specific role of the work the game is doing, to get places where you’re suffering from a variety of natural disasters, from floods to earthquakes to hurricanes.

You run a construction company that starts by naming and choosing a colouring/logo combo. When you first unfold it on any of the maps, it’s a thankfully unlike the expedition, it’s an outside job surrounded by openly freedom, but you’ll do the usual thing and head out to Nippy Scout 4×4 to resume your environment.

Next, rebuilding efforts can be started and can be divided into about 5-6 common activities that will be done on a variety of orders and different habits: scouting, logging, road and bridge construction, driving AI supply, clearing debris, and plot routes for resource delivery.

Regarding the latter, there are four types of resources needed to fix the various things – logs, steel beams, metal pipes, concrete slabs – all of which is to have part of the job rise and run. Getting them, ferrying them wherever they need to go, and installing them, is done in a very snow runnerary way, despite being your only option.

So the vehicle I spent much more time in the game so far is the Mule T1 crane cargo truck. As the name suggests, it is a heavy truck with very decent off-road features built to transport goods and boasts its own built-in crane.

If you’re playing solo, it’s the most important purchase you make early. Because that good statistics and that crane means it’s ideal to handle most of the transportation work the game gives you. Some loads are a bit too heavy and there are some points to deal with, but I’ve been at level 12 so far, but that’s still the heart of the fleet. It definitely exposes a bit of a flaw in Roadcraft launch vehicle products. There are only one or very two successors that can unlock each vehicle type during the course of the process.

Unlock several new types of vehicles, such as heavy cranes and beefy cargo trucks that can handle mule points, such as heavy cranes and beefy cargo trucks.

The worst example of this is in field service vehicles. There are two. It is given free at the start of the game, and as far as I know, it cannot even be repeated in the company’s colouring, and that endgame exchange will not unlock until level 20.

You still unlock one or two new vehicles or variations of existing vehicles at each level you get to wash things a little, but the relatively thin depth and lack of customization of parts at each position means that you feel a much limited sense of progression. There is no doubt that there will be plenty of DLC to strengthen the roster, but the focus seems to be coming to it a bit of course.

Combined with the aforementioned strips such as fuel management, XP/Cash rewards for work are very generous (particularly because the latter is not the case, especially since I don’t spend all the time on upgrades), this point-load craft is an entry in the Uber Hard Spintires series I made on my way with minimal struggle. As outlined in the intro, one exception to it is the damn route of plotting AI tracks. If it’s part of the game to back up difficulty, it certainly is a normal point and does it in a way that is often infuriating.

If you get stuck while driving, you usually do something stupid. If an AI heavy truck has already built a lot of bridges and roads, you will need to do a push-based babysitting whenever you encounter the smallest obstacle, as you follow it along the entire route and use a truck that only works on perfectly straight asphalt highways. I praise Saber for trying something different, but I feel that some of the ways I had to support that Laurie Lemmings almost beat the fact that I can’t get my delivery done on my own.

Those who spend a little more time trying to clear the perfect path may find roadcraft a bit lacking in challenges, but I personally find it can be much colder than usual. The game is in top condition when you’re heading towards the base or when you set up to drive a field service vehicle somewhere and spend time doing certain work. Both act as spawn points for the vehicle, but the latter requires a fuel token that can be easily obtained from side jobs. Once there, you’ll see four stages of the party trick named Roadcraft, and do things like dumping the sand with a dump truck to build the road, using dozers to flatten it, running around the pavement to coat the asphalt, hop with steam rollers to smooth it out.

It’s as mega susphis as you always dream of baking a cake. Because it’s almost impossible to remove sand in a nice uniform, even if the first step is rather merciless. Luckily, you can do each step manually or have your computer do it automatically. Well, unless your pavement finds a small rock you haven’t cleared.

It’s also fun to cut down trees with a tree har, pick up large twigs with a log carrier, and cut them down by cleaning up any mess with a stump marcher. There isn’t much of a process of laying wires between the various spots on the map to power up a substation, but even if it is possible to get stuck in a strange way, you can find a way to lead comically cumbersome cable layers into the backwoods.

Overall, RoadCraft offers a unique twist on the established spin toilet formula, as streamlined things are worth trying. Veterans in some series will long for the peeling element, especially when drafted new things are more frustrating than fun. But the central loop of frustration that gives way to joy when overcoming the environment is still there, and regularly equally satisfying.

Especially when you finally reach your destination when the convoy you spent the whole night pushing up the hill.

RoadCraft will be released on March 20th on PC, Xbox Series X/S and PS5. This review was conducted on the PS5 using code provided by the publisher.