Well, now you don’t have to make up stories or imitate the sounds of destruction and engines as you interact with the world around you. Careful designers and sound engineers have thought of everything for you, immersing you in the atmosphere of almost wild nature and off-road. Yes, as you can easily guess, we are talking about a new creation from the studio Saber Interactive, known to fans of off-road, impassable mud, and hard work. This time, of course, we are offered to climb up to the roof of your car into yet another bottomless puddle while building a few bridges and laying tens, hundreds, and thousands of kilometres of road where nature does not provide them. RoadCraft will be released on PC and consoles on 20 May. Players have already had the chance to play the same demo. Here are some of our impressions.
But let’s talk a little about the game’s predecessor
Do I like the current state of Snowrunner? Definitely not. The artisan approach has done its job – the game’s content support has turned into a classic conveyor belt: here’s a new region with two maps and a few new trucks. And it’s good if it’s trucks because often the developers give us useless scouts as “filler”.
But, I repeat, someone likes it – yes and fine. I am not satisfied with this approach for one reason: nothing new appears in the game, from the word “absolutely”. The same mechanics, the same cargo (albeit repainted), the same warehouses, sawmills, generators, and other beam-slab parts. They tried to give something new: in Ontario, they pompously introduced the mechanic of “firefighting” – bringing a new type of cargo (water) in a new tanker. In fact, bring a new tanker to the point. Repeat XX times. Even the tanker was minimally repainted. Did that change anything? No.
And so every innovation turned out to be the laziest writing, as they say, “for a tick”. New trucks do not add anything unique, except for their appearance. Well, we already have a lot of 8-wheelers with four-wheel drive, for example. What will a few more change? Nothing, just another way to drive the beams.
And then the guys announce RoadCraft, a new game that isn’t even technically part of the Runner series, with its own unique name. The developers shout from the start – “This is a different game, guys! It’s not a driving game, it’s a semi-strategy game, a constraction sim.
But it was foolish to expect that the novelty would not be compared to its predecessor, Snowrunner. It’s simple psychology. People do not want another season. They want a new game – with critical bugs fixed. The list of wishes could fill a dozen pages, but that is not what this conversation is about. And I’m sorry, people are like that – the new thing will be compared to my father, no matter what it is. Why? Off-road? – Check. Heavy equipment? – Plenty. Does it sound similar in words? It certainly does.
Roads? Who needs roads?
Speaking in general terms, almost nothing has changed. Once again, you will have to manage a certain transport company and work hard, using different types of construction and not just machines like in Snowrunner.
As in Saber Interactive’s previous games of this genre, you will be shown the basics of control at the beginning, why you need four-wheel drive and a differential, how to drive this or that steel monster, and so on. If you want, you can always go to the local “Wikipedia” and read the details.
But before you get to the first tractor, you will have to mud, get stuck, drown and play with the winch. You can’t do that without it. “Sabers” will not be themselves if they give you an ordinary road, on which lies normal quality asphalt or at least concrete. No, these very roads will be laid by you!
Having reached the destination in the first task, you will get a choice of three heavyweights, and the task is to clear the area of trees, load the trunks on the tractor, and uproot the stumps. Accordingly, first we get closer to the tractor, then get on the sawmill and start working.
Each mechanism, whether it is a saw or a loader for trunks, has its own control, so do not hope to do something automatically. In the first 5-10 minutes, you will steadily fight with the control of these machines, especially if you are playing on the keyboard and mouse. Here, you will have to calculate exactly so that the saw’s grip correctly took the trunk, and the “hand” of the loader picked it up from the ground and put it in the trailer. The process is so slow that it’s hard to describe in words. You will have to constantly rotate the camera to choose the right angle from which you can see how the equipment behaves. For example, the stump grinder under my control often inverted the control even though I didn’t ask it to do so at all. And I had to stop the machine completely to start all over again. And it was not always possible to hit the stump the first time, even though at first it seems to be a simple task.
After a hard day’s work felling three pines and filling up the tractor, it’s time to move on to the next spot where new tasks and new equipment await. Roads, as I wrote earlier, were simply not an option, so the route will have to be re-established where Makar has not been chasing calves.
So you will spend some more time trying to get to your destination. Then, the process repeats itself with varying degrees of variation. The game is not really about that, it is about routine work and the adventures the developers have prepared for you.
What are we missing?
I’ll start with the most obvious – the absence of the usual in RoadCraft.
No real gearbox
There’s just gas/brake + four-wheel-drive + downshift. And I’m not talking about the manual gearbox that Snowrunner was supposed to bring. No. At least keep what was there – an automatic with the ability to quickly match gears to revs, overdrive, and a couple of downshifts for different conditions. Was it pathetic? And yes, I’m extremely unaccustomed to driving without using the gear stick. Different gearboxes – different car behaviour. You can have 4-5 gearboxes for one car, which does not make a Snowrunner simulator, but at the same time changes the character of the car, including fuel consumption, which is not available yet, but will probably be at release.
No driver in the cockpit
It’s stupid that the “silent GG allows better association with the character” level. Then there’s “an empty tractor makes you feel better about yourself as the director of a salvage company”.
No real mud
I have the feeling that all the developments on the RoadCraft physics of mud have just been thrown out, and a “default” viscosity has been created everywhere, on which every technique – that of a scout, that of a cable-laying machine – runs. And what about the tracks? That will probably be somewhere further down the line. But for now, it’s like this.
No real winch
There is a winch, but it’s not there. The scouts have one. Getting out of the mud seems possible, but where is the mud? Here, it has a different logic – we use it to open gates, pull hooks/points of interest, and move things. The rest of the equipment has the winch cut out for uselessness. And how do you turn the overturned equipment? You don’t. Evacuation is your best friend. And fallen gear will fall.
But what did we get?
Pine Rooter
Finally, with RoadCraft, we get our revenge on those little bastards who have been on our nerves for 4 years.
AI driving
You can send a dumper or a roller – automatically – to do its job. The dumper would then become infinite. (And if self-driving is finite, the logic came from the chat). You can send a convoy of vans. Ok, to save time, let it be.
Terraforming
In RoadCraft, we can build roads, make mountains out of sand, and fill in bodies of water. Whether this will be used in the game (apart from the roads themselves) is hard to say; there’s nothing like that in the demo. The road construction itself is done normally – we dump sand with a dumper, level it with a bulldozer, lay asphalt with a paver, and roll it with a roller. In general, as entertainment for once – cool. On an industrial scale, I’m afraid it can get boring pretty quickly. But you have to give it credit – the sand behaves like sand. Even a dumper can fall out with active steering. Respect.
Tracked vehicles
A lot of people have been waiting for RoadCraft since Madrunner – and here you are. Does it change anything? – Not much, if you ask me. Yes, the equipment should be more passable, in theory. There is no way to test it in the demo. Let it be. It runs, it handles. There’s not much more to say. It’s just there.
Resources to collect around the map
Trees to cut and haul, metal to recycle, junk to sell, and so on. Good or bad – it’s not clear yet, but it is an element of strategy.
Visuals
And what’s definitely worth mentioning are the gorgeous visuals in RoadCraft. Fortunately, we live in a time where computer graphics have really reached the level of photorealism, and there is no higher level, it seems to me. Saber Interactive has made excellent use of all the latest technology to give the player a natural feast for the eyes. The forest looks amazing, with the whole play of light and shadow, the sound of engines, and the sliding of stuck wheels or tracks – everything is realised very naturally. And how beautifully the developers have realised the rain! I have to admit: rarely can you enjoy such natural rainfall in a game. All in all, you definitely can’t worry about the graphical part of the game (and sound).
Preliminary results
RoadCraft is definitely a product for those who loved SnowRunner and even Expeditions: A MudRunner Game (great game, I still can’t understand why the reviews are so low). The studio is clearly on a high (and financially) at the moment, thanks to the success of Space Marine 2. But instead of trying something really new, the team decided to go back to the tried and tested formula of off-road sims. Fortunately, they have a lot of experience in this area.
But there are also a number of questions and even concerns. The immersion in the demo is minimal. Standard equipment, no customisation, and no need to find or discover anything. The time and night cycle has been destroyed for now – you can’t even admire a sunset or drive around at dusk or under a starry sky. The cars have PHARES that aren’t turned on yet. No fuel is needed.
When I played the demo, I couldn’t believe what was happening on the screen. Some cartoonish vehicles are doing cartoonish tasks. There is no sense of heavy machinery. Everyone drives about the same, the weight doesn’t feel right. You can’t damage anything. You don’t have to refuel. It all feels like theatre, which is hard to believe. Let’s hope it’s better when it comes out.
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