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Mini Motorways Nintendo Switch Review

Everyone at one point of another in their life has been sitting in traffic and thought to themselves, I can do this better and this is exactly what Dinosaur Polo Club set out to determine. Mini Motorways is a sequel to their other traffic sim, Mini Metro. Mini Motorways has actually been out since 2019 on Apple Arcade and felt like one of the marquee titles on the service as an addictive game that appears simple, but quickly becomes hectic.

Mini Motorways Nintendo Switch Review

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Mini Motorways is a fairly simple concept: Help cars get from point A to point B. Maps start with one colour vehicle and a destination, you create a simple road and as you get people to their destination, which is the main goal, new colours appear with new destinations. You add roads with one button and delete them with another when you need to fix an issue or make the roads more effective.

At the end of every week you get a reward, which can come in the form of new road tiles to use, because you only have a limited amount, or bridges because sometimes the best way is over water, or things to help with traffic like expressways, roundabouts, and traffic lights. Its all in your hands. In case you think this a game that will just allow traffic to become a problem, it won’t because there are fail states, where if people aren’t getting to their destination in time it will be game over and you will need to restart.

Mini Motorways has an efficient control scheme on the Switch that works great in both handheld and with the pro controller with the latter as my preference of choice to be able to see the city on the big screen like a giant command centre. Coming from Apple Arcade, the Nintendo Switch version also supports touch functionality.

Minimalist Motorways

The aesthetic doesn’t stray far from Mini Metro with a very minimalist, grid based design.Mini Motorways also offers many different color schemes to make the game easy on your eyes depending on your preference, I always preferred the night mode. The art design is paired with a relaxing soundtrack that gets you into the zone when the going gets tough.

Having lived around LA before, it’s no surprise that the first level after the tutorial, is Los Angeles. After that you try to tackle some of the other worst traffic cities in the world including Tokyo, Mexico City, and Rio de Janeiro. To unlock the later cities in the game you need to get a certain amount of people to their destination before the fail state. There are also weekly and daily challenges to keep your traffic engineering skills on peak form as well as a nice photo mode that allows you to capture your award winning city planning.

Flat Tires

On the downside, when your cities get big with roundabouts, overpasses, and all of the traffic it can be hard to get an exact idea of what the problem is and what needs to be done. This problem is also exacerbated by the size of the curser and the inherent nature of using a controller and not a mouse because sometimes you can remove a road or place one somewhere you don’t want. I want to be able to micro and macro manage my roadways. The other issue is that even though there are 14 different locales to explore, they don’t feel all that much different from one another and adding in a little variety would go a long way.

Life is a Highway

Most games are about some form of escapism. A mini vacation to get away from some of the troubles in life like traffic and work. Mini Motorways is a game about managing highways and roads to make the most effective situation of traffic and oddly enough, its a very zen like experience because once cities start advancing, you need to give it all your focus. I find a lot of parallel roads to a game like Tetris with its minimalist design, lack of endgame, and its ability to get you into the zone. With Mini Motorways, the joy is in the journey and not the destination.

8/10