GOTM: June '22
State of Decay 2, No Man’s Sky, and King of Tokyo were the usual suspects this month, accounting for more of my free time than all other games (and TV shows, and movies) combined. With that said, I also put a good number of hours into a couple of free-to-start games on iPad: Top Eleven and F1 Clash. I’m sure I’ll have more to say about those games at some point, but June’s Game of the Month post isn’t the place because this spot is reserved for Mini Motorways.
Dinosaur Polo Club originally released Mini Motorways on Steam last year, but the first I knew of it was when I spotted the Switch version during one of my semi-regular eShop trawls. Since then, nary a night goes by that I don’t spend my last waking moments lying in bed and optimizing traffic flows between color-coordinated residential and business districts. I’ve posted leaderboard scores for all of the game’s 16 maps based on real cities at this point, but daily and weekly challenges along with personal bests that I know I can beat keep me coming back.
What first impressed me about Mini Motorways was its super-clean visual style, which is akin to that used for maps of underground rail networks and such. The optional dark mode and fully custom colorblind options are also deserving of a callout, and are the reason my screenshots might look unlike others that you’ve seen. And actually, while we’re talking about the presentation, it still impresses me after more than a month of playing that as buildings appear further from the city center and the size of the play area increases, the map zooms out in such a way that I never even notice it happening.
Equally impressive are the controls, which make drawing roads to connect different areas, as well as subsequently deleting those roads to make way for new ones, as intuitive as can be. Even the introductions of roundabouts, traffic lights, bridges, and tunnels as you progress through the game only add an additional button press or two to proceedings. You can even pause all of the traffic and completely redesign your road system without worrying about vehicles becoming stranded - they simply keep driving towards their destinations on roads that you’ve removed until they reach a road that you haven’t.
In short, Mini Motorways is an elegantly designed and extremely accessible game that, at least for me, is a perfect fit on the Switch. You don’t have to play it for long to feel like you’ve made progress, but as your roadlaying skills improve you can also enjoy some lengthy sessions without ever starting over. Mini Motorways has replaced games like Piczle Lines DX and the Picross S series as my go-to for short sessions on the Switch, which, while I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned either of those games here before, is about as emphatic a recommendation as I can make.
