Mini Motorways Review (PC)

Do I really want a highway for Los Angeles, or should I try to see what I can do with road tiles and some traffic lights? I do not know the answer to that question, although I think the very fact that I am being offered a raised highway is a sign that things are bad and radical solutions are needed.

I make my choice and then slow the action down, trying to find the best points that should be connected by a raised wave of concrete. I go back and forth on my choice a few times. I think my version of Los Angeles will survive the car apocalypse for another week, which means more completed trips and more choices for further improvement.

Mini Motorways is both developed and published by Dinosaur Polo Club. The experience first appeared on the Apple Arcade service, but I played the more recent PC launch via Steam, which is the definitive version of the title. As the name implies this is a simulation that focuses on traffic, with an elevated level of abstraction.

Regardless of the city gamers choose the experience starts off the same way: connect a few houses to a bigger business, using a limited supply of road tiles. Then watch as small cars, color-coded for your convenience, take trips between them. A counter in the right-hand corner of the screen ticks up. The clock moves forward (I like the speed-up options) and every Sunday an unseen power offers the player a choice between two packages of new traffic options.

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As more colors enter a city it gets harder to keep everything running smoothly. The green cars cannot take their green pip passengers to their green businesses because there is a ton of yellow and red traffic they must deal with. Mini Motorways introduces bridges, traffic lights, and roundabouts, which can all improve the flow of cars in certain areas. With more road tiles available players can also choose to re-design some of their earlier work for a well-optimized city. It is easy to remove already laid out elements and try to create a better street system.

The biggest change to the mechanics is the motorway, which can connect almost any two points on a map. Take the first one that is offered. Make it the best way to move between sections that need to be linked but are far from one another. Get a second motorway drop and see what that can add to a city.

Coming from a world of Skylines or Anno some of the choices made for Mini Motorways seem weird. I understand the need for abstraction. But the fact that homes only connect to businesses is either an ironic comment on capitalism and endless work hours or a sign that adding any sort of third destination would have made the mechanics unworkable.

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Another issue with Mini Motorways is that the featured cities feel soulless. They have the geography, but they do not feel like anything other than grids. A set of red houses in Los Angeles is similar to those in Zurich. I tended to fail at around the same point regardless of where I tried to create the best possible traffic grid.

Mini Motorways has a clean look, focused on bold colors and clear shapes. The development team knows that their focus on traffic means that there is no need to fully simulate a city and show players 3D people or vars moving around. At first, everything seems much too simple, and I wondered how long it would take to get bored with the pure greens, reds, and yellows on my screen.

Once the difficulty level increased, I quickly came to appreciate how easy it is to see details and then try to plan improvements. The music and sound design are also well-integrated with the theme, gently taking the player away from the real world and into a new place where lines and rectangles define reality.

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The Good

The Bad

Conclusion