RoadCraft blindsided me—and my two “down-to-co-op” sons—in the best way. On paper, it’s a lugubrious heavy-machinery sandbox with taxing controls and seemingly endless micromanagement. In practice? It’s a surprisingly addictive (and in co-op often unintentionally hilarious) romp where one’s Tonka Truck dreams come alive in a post-disaster world.
We’re talking over a dozen vehicles (from the humble bushbasher fourbie to colossal shipping cranes), eight sprawling 4 km² maps, and a physics engine that turns every unassuming ditch or boulder into a puzzle barrier between you and precious crafting material. Yes, the controls can feel clunky—kind of by design as you’re juggling routes, vehicles, and impatient AI teammates—but the wrangling, swearing, and successes can deliver their own unique gaming magic.
the wrangling, swearing, and successes can deliver their own unique gaming magic.
Rather than rebuild a small chunk of the world by myself, I hired my kids and handed them the digital equivalent of a Tonka Truck fleet. From the onset, RoadCraft looks and feels like the kind of game that might give you carpal tunnel. Go in expecting complex camera angle control, route-plotting menus, and, when mud becomes involved, massive steel behemoths who begin to respond to your instructions like they’re a pissed-off intern rather than a precision instrument.
That being said, the tutorials are many and informative; the three of us were soon winching one another out of one mire or another (or cackling at our collective misfortune until we somehow pulled off a near-impossible delivery or excavation). Obviously, you can tackle it on your lonesome, too, but that translates to even harder yakka and a greater endorphin drop if you can show Mother Nature who’s really boss.
There is technically a voiced narrative here, but it’s not going to blow you away like the Cat 5 tornadoes you’ve been hired to pick up after. Basically, RoadCraft thrusts you into the aftermath of natural disasters: earthquakes, floods, and wildfires. You’re the new operations manager at Restoration R Us (I’ve taken creative licence here), and most of your main objectives are to clear debris, rebuild roads and bridges, and restore local industry. Eight regions across the globe will drop you into some seriously dense forests, scorched plains, flood-soaked valleys, and every corner hides its own logistical headache.
Hell, simply getting from Point A to Point B can be the Dark Souls of sandbox orienteering. You really have to agonise over which of the forty-plus vehicles should be used, be it bulldozers, excavators, dump trucks, cranes, and more. Obviously, each one handles differently and can come with insanely complex sub-controls—bulldozers feel like you’re hauling a barge through molasses, cranes swing with the grace of a tipsy ballroom dancer, etc. Essentially, the idea is then to wrestle with a brutally realistic physics engine to manipulate materials (wood, sand, asphalt) and ship debris to crushers that turn it into reconstruction resources.
I really can’t overstate how methodical one needs to be, lest you lose 20 minutes of meticulous crane loading work or one of your vehicles to the rocky jaws of a barely passable landslide. Also, have you ever tried steering a 20-metre excavator arm while keeping an eye on your fuel gauge and the 3D minimap? It’s like juggling watermelons on a unicycle.
Some days, I swore the game was designed to test the limits of our patience. On other days, the slight delay in steering actually made each successful manoeuvre feel heroic. After the initial frustration, mastering the basics rewarded us with that weird Tonka-truck satisfaction: sliding a log precisely onto a flatbed or levelling asphalt smoother than a pancake. None of this appeal will make sense to you here until you achieve it in-game.
Interestingly, RoadCraft has manual micromanagement and AI automation in equal parts. You can automate convoys by plotting multi-point routes, then sit back and watch as your digital workforce lumbers along. Or, if you prefer hands-on parenting (er, gameplay), you can trigger the map and hot-swap into vehicles to sort materials.
My crew and I flipped between modes constantly: automating the boring hauls while personally tackling the fun demolition jobs. This blend occasionally felt at odds (why can’t the AI clear fallen trees quicker?), but it also adds texture: do you micromanage like a laboratory rat or trust your robotic buddies?
If you’ve played MudRunner or SnowRunner, you know how the learning curve goes here. It’s pitched upwards like a halfpipe if you go in blind, but insanely satisfying when you assess, plan, and then nail a tricky extraction. RoadCraft ups the ante by layering cooperative strategies on top of the physics simulator. It can feel overwhelming: on our first map, we spent an hour just repositioning a crane that toppled because my son went in too crazy. But once we figured out a simple conveyor-belt trick to haul rubble, we looped that technique and felt unstoppable. Tough? Yes. Unfair? Occasionally. But more often, it felt like the grand puzzle we all signed up for.
Visually, RoadCraft looks polished from a macro perspective but sometimes uglier than a pair of mudflaps in the micro. Distant vistas, rolling hills, and ruined towns receding into the sunset all look fetching in their own weird way. Yet inspect your muddy tyres or the rust on a crane, and you’ll spot low-res textures and pop-in just metres ahead of you. It’s as if the game wants to focus your attention on the big picture: the grandeur of rebuilding. For a machinery sim, that’s fine—but don’t expect near-photo realism.
Meanwhile, in the audio department, engine growls, hydraulic whooshes, and gravel crunching under tyres all sell the Big Boys Toys experience. There’s something satisfying about the whine of a buddy-saving winch or the ker-chunks of concrete slabs landing in a flatbed from way too high a height.
I wish I could say the UI has been translated well to console controls, but that’s a half-truth. Menus are serviceable but feel dated. Route plotting involves zooming into a 2D map that looks like a paper blueprint (charming, but occasionally finicky). Camera controls in tutorials require much tweaking to feel right (per vehicle), and some heavy machinery requires a short TAFE course to get the hang of. Worse, once you get the understanding of how one vehicle handles its x, y, and z, the next vehicle’s take on that can feel vastly different, and a short relearn is required.
At the end of the day, RoadCraft is a game of contradictions—tedious when described, compelling in practice; clunky in the details, gorgeous in the grand view. It sure isn’t for everyone: if you crave twitch-reflex shooters or narrative epics, you’ll probably bail at the second tutorial. But for those who adore the rumble of engines, the banter of friends plotting routes, and the unexpected joy of conquering physics-based adversity, there’s shiny gaming gold hidden under all this developed-on-a-budget gunk.
This is strangely addictive, even if it wears its rough edges proudly. So, strap in, recruit your crew, and embrace the Tonka Truck life. You might just come away with a newfound appreciation for heavy machinery. Or a few new veins on your forehead. Or, like me and mine, some hilarious new family anecdotes.
