As Tom Cochrane once sang, “life is a highway, I want to ride it, all night long”. Evidently, Tom hadn’t been playing Mini Motorways, otherwise, he’d have barely been able to pull himself away from his Switch for long enough to even mutter the line in the first place. Instead, he might have found himself like I did, confused at 3am, wondering how he was still drawing new routes through Rio De Janeiro.
It really is just that engaging. I’ll get that out of the way before digging into the nitty-gritty. If you played Mini Metro, the previous transport puzzler from Dinosaur Polo Club, then you probably know what to expect, and allow me to tell you that once again the developer delivers. With a title that strips away any shoe-horned attempt at narratives and any complex mechanics that take weeks to learn, what remains is an accessible and engaging experience. Everything a good puzzle game should be.
The basic premise is similar to that of Mini Metro, in that you take on the role of a civil engineer to build connections between houses and institutions. The trick is, in that those who live in yellow houses need to go to yellow buildings, those who live in green houses need to go to green buildings, and so on, creating a gameplay loop that’s simple in execution, with plenty of room for scope.
