RoadCraft and Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound are also coming to the same tiers tomorrow, making for an already packed week. However, January 27th sees the arrival of The Talos Principle 2 for PC and Xbox Series X/S, followed by Anno: Mutationem and Drop Duchy on January 28th. All three titles will be available for Ultimate, PC and Premium subscribers.

On January 29th, you can look forward to another heavy hitter – MySims: Cozy Bundle. Oh, and a little something called Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2, one of the best third-person shooters available. Truly the Barbenheimer of our times.

February 2nd sees the addition of Indika for Ultimate and PC Game Pass, followed by Final Fantasy 2 on February 3rd. The latter follows the arrival of the first game in Squaresoft’s legendary series, so at this rate, we can probably experience Final Fantasy 16 by next year.

Unfortunately, as with every new Game Pass wave, some titles are being removed from the service’s library. From January 31st, you’ll no longer have access to the following:

• Shady Part of Me (Cloud, PC, and Console)
• Cataclismo (PC)
• Starbound (Cloud, PC, and Console)
• Lonely Mountains Snow Riders (Cloud, PC, and Console)
• Paw Patrol World (Cloud, PC, and Console)
• Citizen Sleeper 2 Starward Vector (Cloud, PC, and Console)
• Orcs Must Die! Deathtrap (Cloud, PC, and Console)

On September 17th, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, For the King 2, and Overthrown will be playable for Standard subscribers on September 17th. Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor is available on the same day for Ultimate and PC Game Pass, marking its exit from early access.

Frostpunk 2 debuts for Xbox Series X/S and cloud on September 18th alongside Wobbly Life. To prepare for Hades 2’s exit from early access, the original game will be playable on September 19th for Ultimate, Standard and PC Game Pass subscribers.

Endless Legend 2 is up next on September 22nd, which marks its entry into early access via Game Preview for PC. Another rogue-like, Sworn, will exit early access on September 23rd. September 25th sees the addition of Peppa Pig World Adventures and Visions of Mana, both releasing for cloud, PC, and Xbox Series X/S across all three subscription tiers.

Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light is available on September 30th, and Sopa – Tale of the Stolen Potato rounds it all off on October 7th. Check out the titles that will leave the service on September 30th below:

• Ninja Gaiden Sigma (Cloud, Console, and PC)
• Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2 (Cloud, Console, and PC)
• Ninja Gaiden 3 Razor’s Edge (Cloud, Console, and PC)
• Terra Invicta (Game Preview) (PC)

The Rebuild Expansion for RoadCraft brings with it quite a bit of new content, including two new maps, five new vehicles, and a hundred new missions that players can take on. The DLC is priced at $14.99 on PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S. Both of the new maps in the DLC have been described as being Central European-styled, and are titled Contamination and Wash-Out.

The Contamination map will revolve around players helping the region clean up hazardous chemical waste caused by devastating seismic activity in the area. Wash-Out, on the other hand, will have players helping out in the relaunch of a massive oil processing unit in the heart of a reclaimed wasteland. The five new vehicles part of the DLC are the Bridge Layer along with new variants of the Scout.

Alongside the new content part of the expansion itself, RoadCraft has also gotten a free update that brings with it a host of free content and improvements as well. Free content includes new vehicles like the new Fuel Truck variant Wayfarer ST7050, along with a brand new advanced difficulty mode, which gives players a greater level of freedom when it comes to tuning just how tough they want their time with RoadCraft to feel.

Taking cues from previous titles like SnowRunner, advanced difficulty options include more challenging fuel management, harsher conditions for convoys, and more strict recovery rules. To address these new difficulty options, there have also been adjustments made to the costs and economy of the game to offer a greater level of challenge with a focus on realism.

RoadCraft was released on PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S back in May, and you can learn more details about the title by checking out our review. Since the title’s release, developer Saber Interactive has also been working on other, similar titles, with the most recently-announced two being Docked and Road Kings.

Docked is set to be a more story-oriented title where players will take on the task of improving the finances and overall state of a dock that they have inherited from their father. Along with the use of heavy machinery that is a part of this style of title, Docked will also feature an emphasis on management aspects as players take on jobs to turn a profit, and eventually even build upgrades for their dock, dubbed Port Wake.

Road Kings will seemingly be more free form, being a truck-driving simulator in the vein of American Truck Simulator. However, the game will also seemingly have its own story, with the player rising through the ranks from being a rookie driver all the way to being the owner of their own trucking company.

In the meantime, I Am Your Beast is available now for all three subscriber tiers on cloud, PC, and Xbox Series X/S. Standard subscribers can also play Nine Sols, another critically acclaimed Metroidvania, on September 3rd. On the same day as Silksong, Digital Sun’s Cataclismo will be available for PC subscribers.

PAW Patrol World is next up on September 10th for all tiers on cloud, consoles and PC, followed by Saber Interactive’s RoadCraft on September 16th for Ultimate and Standard subscribers. Not the busiest month for first-party titles, but The Outer Worlds 2 is still to come in October.

As usual, select titles will be leaving Game Pass on September 15th. Check them out below and either finish them beforehand or purchase them at 20 percent off.

• All You Need is Help (Cloud, Console, and PC)
• Wargroove 2 (Cloud, Console, and PC)
• We Love Katamari Reroll + Royal Reverie (Cloud, Console, and PC)

Regarding PSSR, graphics R&D technical director Denis Sladkov told us in a recent interview that its quality is “noticeably better compared to previous FSR solutions. So it’s not vital per se, but definitely helps push said fidelity.

“We try to stay at the forefront of modern visual technologies, and while it’s sometimes hard and requires good timing and a lot of additional coordination with different partners, we’re trying to provide the best quality visuals we can to date.”

The results definitely show – our review praised RoadCraft for its gorgeous visuals. Alongside PS5 and PS5 Pro, it’s available for Xbox Series X/S and PC, with the premise revolving around using heavy machinery to help areas affected by natural disasters. You’ll have all sorts of heavy machinery available to build roads and clear debris, each possessing realistic physics and controls.

RoadCraft hasn’t been without its challenges at launch, but it’s improving. The current roadmap promises new vehicle variants and Photo Mode in June, followed by more variants and quality-of-life improvements in July. September adds two new maps, five vehicles, Hard Mode options, and new missions.

How much of RoadCraft was under development alongside last year’s Expeditions: A MudRunner Game?

Ivan Khomenko (Production Lead): RoadCraft was developed by an entirely different team, and both projects were cooking in parallel, give or take. In our case, the game went through a few iterations as the vision and specifically scope evolved – so even though they started around the same time, the paths were pretty different.

The overall timeline of development is about 3.5 years, but the project heavily changed a couple of times.

"However we’ve definitely spent some time exploring player feedback at the release."

Did feedback from Expeditions alter your original plans for RoadCraft?

Vitaliy Yaruta (Game Director): Not really – by the time Expeditions launched, RoadCraft was already deep in the polishing phase, with its core systems locked down. We were watching the feedback closely, of course, but it was a bit too late in the cycle to make meaningful changes based on it. However we’ve definitely spent some time exploring player feedback at the release. While we could not make much use of it momentarily, we took a lot of hints for future projects.

How did the idea of expanding the gameplay of previous games like MudRunner and SnowRunner into also including massive construction vehicles come about?

Vitaliy Yaruta (Game Director): We had an “ancient” technological demo which worked on the MudRunner engine where we could disperse sand and drop down some trees with a “BAT-M” vehicle. That was kinda it, but the idea of pouring sand everywhere building some kind of roads out of it, stuck. It was a much smaller project in scope, we were in the very beginning of building a new engine iteration for future “vehicle projects”. The basic idea was “we build sand roads somewhere in deep forest as a logistical support unit, that gets rid of the forest itself and provides a path for an automated convoy”. As you can see all this ended up pretty differently, but that was the first iteration of the idea only, it evolved alongside our engine capabilities and ongoing playtests.

Construction vehicles seemed cool and at some point people just wanted to add more different things from cranes to dozers to cable layers. More gameplay features appeared to support those “weird machines” existence along the way and not everything even ended up in the game. Even asphalt itself was not a part of the first feature scope and appeared later in the development. We’ve tried a lot of different approaches, features, gameplay loops. Some did stick, some did not, for some we did not have a technology basis, some appeared to be even more UI heavy, than existing ones. It was a long process, and the original idea itself has transformed several times during the development process.

"Construction vehicles seemed cool and at some point people just wanted to add more different things from cranes to dozers to cable layers."

What can you tell us about the two maps that are planned for RoadCraft as part of its Rebuild Expansion?

Vitaliy Yaruta (Game Director): The level designers really went all-in here. They took everything we learned: the good, the painful, the surprising – from crafting the base game, and put it into building two brand new maps that they’re genuinely excited about. You’ll definitely feel a step up in ambition and clarity. Not to mention new vehicles, mechanics and objectives.

And we do, of course, have more in development than those 2.

Which of the many vehicle types in RoadCraft does the development team find the hardest to work with?

Ivan Khomenko (Production Lead): There are different types of “hard.” On the programming side, harvesters and dump trucks were beasts. Harvesters required custom logic for cutting, grabbing, trimming, and converting trees into logs – all while syncing with complex physics and animated parts like rollers, blades, and pistons. Dump trucks, on the other hand, pushed us into full-on sandbox physics with how the material moves in the bed and then forms terrain when dumped. Some machines were tricky just because they’re so unusual. The Baikal crane and Kronenwerk, for instance, don’t even have suspension systems – so we had to strike a balance between realism and playability. Same goes for the Lynx with its weird suspension layout. Truth is, almost every vehicle was a puzzle of its own. No shortcuts when you’re dealing with this level of mechanical variety.

Are there plans to bring in more environment types than what RoadCraft will launch with?

Aleksei Kiriushkin (Lead Game Designer): Depends on what you mean by “environment types.” If we’re talking full-blown new biomes – not in the Rebuild Expansion. But, if you mean maps with drastically different terrain profiles, traversal challenges, and visual identity – absolutely. Variety is important not just for the players but for our designers as well, so they stay sane and focused during long hours.

As for completely new biomes – we’ll see what the future brings.

"We’ve tried a lot of different approaches, features, gameplay loops."

Are there any plans for post-launch content that revolves around the co-op system?

Aleksei Kiriushkin (Lead Game Designer): Co-op isn’t just a mode in RoadCraft – it’s part of its DNA. Pretty much everything in the game is designed to work both solo and in multiplayer, so we don’t really think in terms of “this is a co-op feature” vs. “this is a single-player feature.” That said, we have plenty of new stuff in the works that’ll give you and your crew more toys and tools to play with. Stay tuned!

What kinds of new vehicles can we expect to come to RoadCraft through post-launch releases?

Aleksei Kiriushkin (Lead Game Designer): We’ve noticed that a lot of players lack the ability to winch their stuck (or otherwise crippled) vehicles out of trouble. So the first update available somewhere in June will provide a trio of specialized Search & Recovery vehicles, built for that role. And yes, we’ve seen your messages about wanting more Cargo Crane Trucks – you might be seeing something in that area sooner than you expect!

We’re exploring a number of other potential existing vehicle variants (cargo and dump trucks mainly). There, of course, will be completely new vehicles later down the road, but it’s a bit early to communicate around them.

Also (suppose it’s not even a secret anymore) the Bridge Layer is real and it’s coming (even 2 of them are) It’ll let you deploy folding bridges and even move them around. That’s a big one as far as temporary infrastructure solutions go.

What resolution and FPS will the game run on PS5, PS5 Pro, Xbox Series S and X?

Denis Sladkov (Graphics R&D Technical Director):

Xbox Series S:

• Dynamic render resolution from 720p up to 1080p with upscale to 1440p, 30 FPS

Xbox Series X and PS5:

• Performance (speed) mode: dynamic render resolution from 720p up to 1080p with upscale to 2160p, 60 FPS
• Quality mode: dynamic render resolution from 1080p up to 1440p with upscale to 2160p, 30 FPS

PS5 pro:

• Performance (speed) mode: dynamic render resolution from 1080p up to 1440p with upscale to 2160p, 60 FPS
• Quality mode: dynamic render resolution from 1080p up to 2160p with upscale to 2160p, 30 FPS
  10) When it comes to the console versions, will there be enhancements exclusive to the PS5 Pro?

Denis Sladkov (Graphics R&D Technical Director): Higher render resolution, upscale with PSSR.

"The quality of PSSR is noticeably better compared to previous FSR solutions."

Are there any plans to bring Roadcraft to the Nintendo Switch 2?

Denis Sladkov (Graphics R&D Technical Director): We’ll have to see how it goes. We have a couple of technical tests, as of now, but nothing to announce this time.

How vital will technologies like PSSR play in pushing visual fidelity further on PS5 Pro?

Denis Sladkov (Graphics R&D Technical Director): The quality of PSSR is noticeably better compared to previous FSR solutions. So it’s not vital per se, but definitely helps push said fidelity:) We try to stay at the forefront of modern visual technologies, and while it’s sometimes hard and requires good timing and a lot of additional coordination with different partners, we’re trying to provide the best quality visuals we can to date.

While there is a very in-depth tutorial in-game that holds your hand every step of the way, there are a lot of nuances to road construction that you may not be aware of, and this RoadCraft guide has everything you need to know about those game mechanics.

Scout Vehicle Selection

The Scout is a critical vehicle for its scanning and winching capabilities, and while there are 7 to choose from, only 2 are available initially. Between these first two Scouts, the Armiger Thunder IV should be your preferred choice, due to its higher mobility and shorter wheelbase. Your eventual Scout vehicle should be the Tuz 119 “Lynx” which becomes available in the Deluge campaign for a price of nearly 25,000. The winch capability will come in handy as you clear debris to establish routes, and scan for terrain and objects.

Field Recovery Vehicles

These vehicles serve the purpose of behaving as spawn points for your other utility vehicles. This will be tremendously helpful in situations where you will require multiple pieces of equipment at a given location. Simply drive one of these to the work site such as a road construction objective, and you can simply spawn all task-related vehicles there, at the cost of Recovery Tokens. The free KHAN Lo “Strannik” Field Service Vehicle will more than suffice for this purpose, while also being equipped with a winch for manual towing.

Equipment Transporters

In the absence of fuel tokens, vehicle haulers can also be used to accomplish the task of manually delivering multiple vehicles to a work site. The Zikz 605E Heavy Equipment Transporter will be your preferred choice at a cost of 25,000, and will serve you well throughout the campaign. However, the Step 39331 “Pike” Light Equipment Transporter can function just as well, since it can use both its flatbed and its winch to haul two vehicles at a time, with maximum tonnage capability being the true limitation.

Crane Trucks

A great deal of what you will be doing in the game will involve picking stuff up off of the ground with a crane and placing it onto a flatbed for transportation. While you will be provided with two separate vehicles to accomplish this, it will be quite a tedious process especially for solo players. This is where the Mule T1 Cargo Crane Truck comes in immediately useful, at a price of 27,000. It will save you a great deal of time and effort over multiple instances in the campaign. Eventually, you will purchase better Craned vehicles, but the older ones will never use utility, as you can leave them in place at your various facilities to act as on-site loaders.

In a pinch, Crane Trucks can serve as a winch vehicle for any situation that may arise.

Road Construction

Your AI convoys are going to get hung up on every little obstacle along their dirt path routes, and this is where good road building comes into play. Locate a quarry source for sand, and begin filling in the route with your loaded Dump Truck.

Next, use your Dozer set to sand leveling or better yet, your Roller, to perform multiple passes in order to flatten the sand, with two passes being an absolute minimum. Be sure to proceed as slowly and carefully as you can on the second and further passes, listening carefully for audio feedback while traversing the route, which will sound different when traveling over fully flattened ground compared to slightly uneven terrain.

A recommended method is to go down the center twice, once in each direction, in order to perfect the two ends. Then travel once along each side to spread the sand evenly, followed by a single final pass down the center again.

Asphalt Paving

Strictly speaking, asphalt paving is unnecessary in the vast majority of situations, unless required by mission objectives. However, if you do elect to pave all your roads, there are some important steps to take.

The sand must be perfectly flattened, else the paving machines will frequently snag on unseen obstacles. One way to mitigate this, is to use the Paver while traveling in reverse. While this may seem odd, since the asphalt is deposited from the front and flattened by the rear, the game still allows it.

An even better option is to hoist the Paver with a mobile Crane and float it low over the planned route, and then drive the Crane along the path instead, which is significantly faster and avoids physics bugs.

Deploy the Roller next, and use the same leveling process as you do with sand: down the center once in each direction, then each side once, and one last time down the center again.

Leveling Uneven Roads

Failure to properly level the sand before laying down asphalt can lead to significantly large bumps in your roads. You can still recover from a situation like this without having to resort to using your Dozer’s Asphalt Destruction grader mode. Take your Roller out instead and perform multiple passes over the bump with it, and it will flatten out eventually.

Plotting Routes For AI Convoys

While creating routes for your transport vehicles to follow, be sure to set them along one side of the road rather than down the center. This will mitigate head-on collisions between AI traffic traveling in opposite directions, as their pathing can be quite poor. Also avoid placing an excessive number of waypoints wherever possible as this is interpreted as a direction change. While the vehicles will not get turned completely around, they can bug out and end up in an environmental hazard.

Be sure to delete the routes once you have completed the related objectives and collected all of the rewards, in order to maintain a clean infrastructure map.

That is everything you need to know about constructing proper roads in RoadCraft.

Whereas previous games in the franchise have focused more on driving off-road vehicles in more remote parts of the world and setting up supply lines, the focus in RoadCraft is instead is to help in rebuilding places that have been devastated by natural disasters. Throughout the eight massive maps available in RoadCraft at launch, players will have to deal with the aftermath of tsunamis, earthquakes, and massive storms that have left the maps in ruin.

In terms of gameplay, players are first tasked with scouting the area that they’ve just entered. After getting a lay of the land, the player is then given plenty of objectives to complete which will help them slowly rebuild pockets of industry all over the map. Where objectives initially start out being as simple as setting up a forward base by driving a truck full of important resources there, they can quickly start getting more complex, like having to manufacture pipes that you then have to use to replace broken ones in order to ensure that the overall area has steady access to gas.

“Thanks to Saber Interactive’s expertise, RoadCraft pushes the boundaries of realism with an evolved physics engine, offering unprecedented, authentic interactions with the environment,” wrote the studio in its press release. “The only limit is the imagination you and your co-op partners bring!”

At launch, RoadCraft features more than 40 vehicles to choose from, that range from SUVs to cargo trucks, cranes, and even bulldozers and road rollers. These vehicles can be used throughout the 8 maps available at launch, each one falling under one of three biomes. The studio has also confirmed that there are plans to bring in more vehicles, maps and biomes to the game through post-launch content releases.

RoadCraft can be played in single-player, as well as with up to three other players in co-op multiplayer. Along with this, the game also features support for 14 languages, along with full voice-overs in English. A Rebuild Edition of the game is also available, which allows playears to buy the Invictus Type A scout vehicle right at the beginning. The Rebuild Edition also gives players access to the first paid DLC, which is slated for release later this year.

For more details about RoadCraft, check out our review, where we gave it a score of 9 out of 10, praising its gameplay loop, variety of vehicles, co-op gameplay, and visuals. And in case you’re left with more questions about the game, here’s everything you need to know. Also check out the sandbox trailer released earlier this month which compared playing RoadCraft with children playing with toy trucks in their sandboxes.

"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.

Open World?

While Roadcraft’s nature of gameplay would suit an open-world framework really well, Saber Interactive has clarified that the game would not “technically” be an open-world. Instead, players would get a bunch of different maps, each spanning an area of over 4 km² that is free to explore at their own will. Each of these maps would also take players to different biomes, ranging from forests to muddy swamps and mountains, so the diversity does make up for the lack of a contiguous open-world experience.

Machinery & Vehicle Gameplay

As mentioned previously, Roadcraft is a game about restoring sites struck by natural disasters back to their former glory, so the moment-to-moment gameplay revolves around operating heavy-duty vehicles of different kinds. You can use a bulldozer to pick up rubble, a crane to lift heavy objects in both horizontal and vertical fashion, and use quarry units to enable on-site refueling.

Each of these vehicles has been faithfully recreated from both a visual and functional standpoint, and players will have to be extremely patient while operating these heavy-duty units as they come to terms with the many functions that each of them bring to the table. At its core, Roadcraft is a simulation game – so vehicles are naturally going to be quite slow in terms of operations, requiring players to operate with intention should they wish to clear the toughest challenges of the game.

Exploration & Scouting

Because the gameplay loop is about restoring these sites to their former glory, scouting is going to be a really important piece of Roadcaft’s gameplay. You can’t just go waltzing around a disaster site with bulldozers and cranes and randomly lift stuff up and expect it to work; you are going to need a foolproof strategy. And that’s where scouting comes into play, and players will need to use scouting vehicles to chart the path ahead and get an overview of how things are going to play out. Setting up quarry stations in the right place is also pivotal, and exploring new ways to reach remote locations is something that’s going to be quite important.

Construction & Resource Management

Simulation isn’t just about getting to grips with how these hulking behemoths of machines function, but also about understanding the process of construction and how things play out in a particular sequence. You first have to clear out debris, and then you lay down roads using concrete or asphalt and so on and so forth. Resource management also comes into play at this point in time, making it important to be well prepared for missions beforehand and also understand how much raw material you are going to need before jumping into it.

Operations & Logistics

Roadcraft has a plethora of different systems when it comes to moment-to-moment gameplay, and while we do have an idea of how things are going to play out on a micro level, let’s also discuss the macro level gameplay. Operations and logistics become an important part of Roadcraft, and that involves ensuring a smooth flow of resources and machinery across different operations. You have to gather resources like timber and steel to craft the materials required for construction, and also automate certain tasks over time to help reduce the element of redundancy across runs. In Roadcraft, you are the chief of operations for your construction company, and mastering the management will also be a very important element of the gameplay.

Progression System

Much like most games meant to be played over dozens upon dozens of hours, Roadcraft is also heavy on the progression element of things. As you clear out levels and complete tasks, you will be rewarded with XP and money, which can be cashed in to unlock new heavy-duty vehicles, contracts, or upgrades to make your future missions a lot easier to handle. Indulging in player progression and getting a grasp of how to build out your strategy will be important in the long run, prioritizing the purchases and upgrades based on your play style.

Multiplayer Co-op

While you can definitely go all solo, Roadcraft also offers you the option to join forces with friends and take part in some multiplayer action. You can team up with up to 4 friends and tackle some of the toughest challenges that the game has to offer. Roadcraft is a game that thrives on providing emergent narratives; dynamic stories that are personal to your experience, and those stories tend to become a lot more interesting when there are more players trying to achieve a singular goal. You can divide responsibilities amongst yourself in times of peril, communicate with each other through in-game voice chat, and have a blast.

Creative Problem Solving

Roadcraft is a game that has a sandbox nature, meaning that players are free to tackle objectives in any way they see fit. You could use the same old tried and tested methods for your construction duties, or you could get a little more creative with your tactics and come up with more efficient ways to go about business. It encourages replayability and explores the full spectrum of the gameplay mechanics, allowing you to better understand what works for you and what doesn’t.

Dynamic Road Construction Anywhere

Building roads is a very important part of Roadcraft’s gameplay loop, and it’s something that you are going to repeat on a regular basis as you go about the restoration of these disaster-stricken sites. The game allows for a dynamic road construction system where you can lay dow materials and build roads anywhere, provided you have the required materials for the job, which will help you move through complex terrain in a much smoother manner. Think Death Stranding, but a lot more complex and dynamic.

Infrastructure Repair Focus

As a natural extension to what we discussed before, Roadcraft is about restoring these sites, and rebuilding lost infrastructure is a big part of that process. You are going to be laying down roads, building bridges, and an electrical system to restore critical functionality.

Modding Support Post-Launch

Mods can add so much longevity and flexibility to a game, and it’s always fun to just goof around and apply some wacky mods to switch up the playing experience. Roadcraft’s sandbox nature and simulation gameplay make it a perfect companion for mod support, since you could use the power of mods to introduce accessibility or maybe provide some improvements over the stock release. But unfortunately, developer Saber Interactive has confirmed that there wouldn’t be any support for mods at Roadcraft’s launch. But on the bright side, they have also confirmed that they will be bringing mods eventually into the mix, starting from map mods to vehicle mods and much more.

Steering Wheel Compatibility

Given the driving nature of Roadcraft, many players would naturally wish to use their steering wheels to control these heavy-duty trucks and bulldozers. Fortunately, Focus has confirmed that Roadcraft would be featuring compatibility for steering wheels – but with a minor caveat. At launch, Roadcraft’s steering wheel compatibility is going to be pretty basic, but it will be expanded and fleshed out over time, so that’s not much of an issue.

Enhanced Physics Engine

Much like Snowrunner and MudRunner, Roadcraft is also built upon the Swarm engine that powers all of these complex simulations. Saber Interactive has stated that the team has made plenty of changes to its systems that enable better simulation of different kinds of terrains and how these things affect the movement and mobility of these heavy-duty vehicles. It’s built for current generation of consoles, so the developers have gotten a lot more room to play with in terms of raw graphical and CPU horsepower.

Price And Platforms

Lastly, there’s the topic of price and platforms. Roadcraft is set to release on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S. It’s retailing for just $40 right now, making it a great deal for anyone interested in a long-term simulation experience. The experience is largely going to remain the same across all platforms, but if you do happen to have a compatible PC – we would recommend going for that version because of modding support and flexibility in graphical options.