Mini Motorways Review

 












A Minimalist Cityscape-A Mini Motorways Review

Following last week's review of the brutally challenging platformer Garlic, I decided to spend this week with a far more relaxed and casual experience in Mini Motorways. Let's see if this minimalist building and simulation game from Dinosaur Polo Club has what it takes to be great.

Simply Calming Construction

At its core Mini Motorways is all about connecting houses of color coordinated cars to their corresponding destinations. You'll drag roads however you like with limited resources and use infrastructures like bridges, tunnels, roundabouts, and traffic lights to create an interconnected city. 


The goal of the game is to see just how long your city can get citizens to destinations before it takes too long. Operating on a normal week to week schedule, at the end of every Sunday you'll get the option of one of two choices-these vary every time. It is your decisions here that affect just how long your city will stay afloat.

At first I was a bit skeptical of the difficulty of Mini Motorways. Would things get too frantic and lead to rapid decisions in too little time? To my relief Mini Motorways offers a pause button at all times where you can adjust your roads without having to worry. The longer your city operates the more houses and attractions pop up until its game over. 

Depending on how well you do in any specific area, all with their own rivers, mountains, and other obstacles, you'll unlock even more places to build in. All 11 areas were distinct enough in their own right to keep things interesting, and I was challenged with shifting my strategy each time. 


My absolute favorite part about Mini Motorways is seeing a city go from one road to this absolute monolith full of several highways and tons of cars. 


I'd say my only gripe with Mini Motorways is its reliance on simplicity in graphics. It does keep things very clean sure, but in the end it made the experience feel more akin to a mobile game than something to be played on a PC. In addition to graphics, which aren't the be all end all, sometimes the very streamlined mouse controls would lead to small issues in tweaking a road to exactly the shape I wanted. With both those being stated, they both weren't enough to substantially hamper the experience, just some minor gripes to keep in mind. 

Verdict

In a pound for pound battle for simplistic and relaxing experiences, Mini Motorways could come out on top. With easy to understand goals alongside immensely satisfying yet simple graphics, Mini Motorways is for sure worth your time, even if it can feel like a mobile game at times. 

9/10-Masterclass In Relaxation 

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