Roadcraft Masterfully Mixes Mudrunner Physics with Disaster Recovery Gameplay
- Antal Bokor
- 5 days ago
- 5 min read
Updated: 4 days ago
The Mudrunner series always fascinated me. They’re the only prominent games in a very niche genre. While most car games rely on speed to give you a thrilling challenge, the Mudrunner series can give you that same white-knuckle feeling while driving through some mud at five miles per hour. Roadcraft continues this tradition, but shakes the formula up enough to make it the most unique offering in this series yet.
Roadcraft might not have the Mudrunner name attached to it, but it’s definitely a Mudrunner game, complete with those great mud and terrain physics that made the series that started with Spintires gain a cult-like following. That means you are very much man versus nature–or in this case, vehicles vs nature. But this time around, you have more ability to reshape the world around you as you put things right again.
The premise behind Roadcraft is simple: some sort of natural disaster has ravaged an area, and your job is to go in and get it running again. That includes tasks like clearing debris, cutting down trees, building roads, reconnecting electricity, delivering equipment and more. You’ll be doing all of this in a range of different vehicles, and of course: there will be lots of mud and difficult terrain to maneuver through.
Roadcraft isn’t centered around a single vehicle or task. The goal is to use a small fleet of vehicles to conduct many different tasks, depending on the scenario. If you’re not playing co-op, you’re completely alone, and must do everything yourself–except for a few automated tasks. And there is a lot to do. Spread over eight maps, Roadcraft is a whole lot of game if you’re tackling it completely solo.
There is a missed opportunity here with regards to your logistics business. The focus is on the tasks themselves, but there is little at stake besides lost time. If you roll over a vehicle, you have to recover that vehicle at a garage or a mobile base. There is no financial penalty. It would have been interesting to play a game that requires you to not only possess a fleet of capable vehicles, but also require you to maintain those vehicles so they’re up and running efficiently for future tasks.
After you play Roadcraft you might think “calm down Satan, just getting these objectives completed can be tricky enough.” And that’s fair. But beyond vehicle recovery, there is little penalty for making a mistake. No popped tires, no crushed panels, no destroyed equipment. Roadcraft strikes a strange balance between realism and sandbox fun.
Roadcraft will require you to pick up every single piece of cargo you want to put in the back of your truck, but will allow you to fill your dump truck with sand as long as you’re within the huge sand quarry radius.
There is no damage system in Roadcraft, and your vehicles don’t run out of fuel. That means using all wheel drive and differential lock give you no penalties like extra fuel consumption as they did in other games.
Cooperative mode looks like it could be a blast–invite three friends to help with the recovery efforts. It could turn a few of the tasks that are tedious solo, into fun cooperative adventures. For instance, if you want to fix up a road one person can bring in the sand while the other follows behind and smooths it down. There is also plenty of opportunity for shenanigans.
As I mentioned before, there is a whole lot of Roadcraft. There are eight maps that ship with the base game. Each map has their own set of objectives as well as different types of terrain, environments, and the challenges that come with that. Each map represents a different recovery scenario, too–you’ll be dealing with areas that have been through floods, hurricanes, and more. That means lots of washed out roads and fallen trees, which can make getting from point A to point B a challenge on its own, let alone having to figure out how to get building materials through.
You’re not just behind the wheel in Roadcraft, there is also a top-down logistical mode. This mode allows you to see parts of the region that have been uncovered, as well as get a glance at overlays that display information on the electrical grid, pipe runs, and more. You will also be tasked with setting routes for convoys by placing waypoints. You really need to baby those convoys, too. A route that worked before can fail once vehicles start to wear ruts into the path. Then you have to go back out, lay down some sand and smooth it out. Put down asphalt and roll it into a paved road for extra durability. Or your convoy can fail completely inexplicably, because that happens too.
Roadcraft has two currencies: money and fuel. Though fuel isn’t used to make your vehicles run in Roadcraft, you instead use it to instantly transfer vehicles via a specialized vehicle that acts as a mobile base of operations. Money allows you to unlock new vehicles, as well as purchase permanent replacements to the starter versions of each vehicle type. Some vehicles are locked behind certain objectives or behind account level. Unfortunately, experience gain feels very slow in Roadcraft–at least as a solo player.
As expected, the physics in Roadcraft are great. The terrain simulation is the backbone of this game, and Roadcraft has managed to impress me. I was in awe every time I would watch the water realistically fill in tracks I would make driving overloaded trucks. And despite my efforts at being careful, I tipped over more times than I want to admit.
For the most part, things work the way you expect them to. Want to load a slow vehicle onto a truck for transport? Yep, that works. And if it doesn’t work, the worst that happens is you fall over and have to respawn. This made it less risky for me to experiment, and before I knew it I was having fun. Even if that means accepting that sometimes sand just falls from the sky.
The attention to detail goes beyond the game world. Each vehicle in Roadcraft is gorgeous, including incredibly detailed cockpits. While I’m usually someone who plays vehicle games from the cockpit as much as possible, Roadcraft had me in third person most of the time. That’s mostly because I wanted the extra situational awareness, not because the cabins weren’t top notch. But if you’re a heavy machinery enthusiast (I know y’all are out there) this game has all sorts of eye candy for you.
Roadcraft feels like the culmination of every Mudrunner game before it. It does have a strange relationship with fun versus realism. I think developer Saber Interactive managed to strike a decent balance. But, while I could lose myself for hours playing Roadcraft, sometimes I’d just hit a point where I’d have to put it down and wouldn’t want to come back to it that day. Roadcraft is brilliant, addictive, and completely engrossing. I can’t wait to get my friends involved.