Where we’re going, we WILL need roads.
As a fan of Mudrunner and its excellent sequel, Snowrunner, I was absolutely interested in checking out Roadcraft, a game that feels like it was destined to happen. With all the complexities that would follow from game to game, Roadcraft is the culmination of those ideas, mechanics, and world-building, wrapped up in a very intricate and yet relaxing experience about pushing sand around, building roads, and cutting down trees.
If you’ve ever been stuck on the side of a highway due to construction, watching big vehicles building a road or tending to a collapsed bridge, Roadcraft allows you to live that lifestyle as a member of a construction team tasked with rebuilding and repairing a once-thriving industrial community. Its tasks may feel mundane and boring, but the physics and execution of the gameplay are wildly addictive.
Roadcraft, in many ways, is a simulation game. However, it knows when and where to be a videogame. Some tasks will have you using a crane to deliver slabs of concrete into the back of a truck, attempting to line up each slab perfectly so they are not slanted or causing the vehicle to tip over, whereas lowering those completed slabs into a defensive wall is as easy as dropping the load into the highlighted green section.
In fact, I’m going to sum up a lot of this game through an experience I had while playing this game co-op with a good friend of mine. In the game’s third level, or fourth if you’ve chosen a different path, you are tasked with building a series of roads to get some goods from one manufacturing plant to another. Granted, that is pretty much every mission, but this one is a long trek where you need to pave two sections that are extremely destroyed due to some savage weather conditions.
Roadcraft has two ways to build roads. Some are automatic, whereas you have ample opportunity to manually make roads wherever you want. The automatic ways simply has you placing a vehicle in a zone and then targeting the road, and it will automatically make the road, provided you have the four vehicles ready to go. The sand is applied first, then the dozer to flatten the sand. You’ll follow that up by applying asphalt, and then a roller to finish it off. While you can tackle these manually, the missions require you to tackle these roads in a particular way.
Despite the ease of building these roads, we had a few areas where the plant had seen most of its foundation completely destroyed. So, we had to lay down sand, take the dozer and flatten it, and then plot the path the vehicles would take. These then have AI driving a vehicle to its destination with some questionable driving AI. Since these vehicles often have to turn wide due to how they control, some paths may need to be adjusted, as you often will see them just drive off cliffs if they hit a snag or obstacle.
Once we built these roads and rebuilt the foundation to the plant, our vehicle made it through. Our next objective was to drive to the top of the mountain to survey the broken bridge to the next quarry. The path to the mountain was a slog of muddy water and mud that was undrivable, even when you apply 4-wheel drive or your differential, which allows the wheels on the same axle to rotate at different speeds. So, we once again relied on the sand truck, which can refill sand anywhere within the radius of a quarry, as well as the dozer to flatten said sand. Despite the repetition of using these two vehicles over and over, it never once got boring.
After surveying the quarry, and the length of the bridge we needed, it was time to build the bridge. Thankfully, the path we crafted would allow us to harvest some concrete slabs to complete the job. So, we loaded up a truck with bits and pieces of broken concrete and forged those into the slabs we needed. Since the bridge was so big, we needed 8 slabs. To save on time, we decided to haul all 8 at once. This was a bad idea. Despite my efforts, the 8 slabs did fit into the back of the truck, but were sort of not entirely piled straight. The truck; however, can strap down the load, and as I drove it to the location to build the bridge, it started to tip.
I had my friend drive alongside me, staying about a foot away on my right, where the concrete slabs were attempting to slide off, or pull the vehicle to the right since the straps held the load. This method of being my support felt like we were a bunch of mates leaving the pub and drunk out of our minds, just using each other as a crutch as we attempted to walk home. Thankfully, we arrived, the bridge was made, and we looked forward to what else this environment had in store for us. As we surveyed it out, some pipes needed to be repaired, and countless other tasks that would benefit the community and serve our needs as a thriving construction unit.
Roadcraft is about ensuring you provide safe passage to the vehicles you are driving, to the AI vehicles that start to haul goods from the plants you have aided in repairing. You’ll dig into the ground to lay cable for power, replace pipes along the mountainside, to just recycling and eliminating the debris from a storm that has left this industrial patch a complete mess. You’ll cut down trees and harvest the lumber or using a crane to pull goods off a boat. Nearly every possible facet of this industry is presented, with deeply in-depth controls to each vehicle. The mobile crane, for example, has six to seven control features on each the LB and RB buttons, such as rotating the load, lowering it, or moving the crane in all directions. Still, despite that complexity, you can lose hours in this game, chilling to some ambient music, and the basic needs of simply laying a road.
What really sells Roadcraft is its attention to physics. The weight of a vehicle will be impacted by what you are doing, the angle of the road, and how you are driving. With those 8 slabs of concrete in my truck, every time I would gun it, the front of the vehicle would lift up. This type of thinking, planning, and execution will really change how you go about your tasks. And, with 4-player co-op, you can really feel like a construction unit as you work together to get the job done.
Roadcraft is also a game about patience. You can often spend upwards to a dozen hours in each of its 8 levels. Each level is packed with countless objectives that are story-focused, to side activities that look to build up the community. Even just building a simple road to make your trucks ride smoothly can take over an hour as you swap back and forth from truck to truck. However, taking that job in co-op means you can share the load, and assign certain tasks to make the missions go faster. Still, there is likely 60-80 hours here if you look to complete every last objective and rebuild roads wherever you see. It’s wild how addictive this game can be given the mundane tasks in front of you.
Roadcraft uses a custom version of the Swarm engine, the same engine used in World War Z and Warhammer 40K: Space Marine 2. This results in a stunningly beautiful game that has one of the most realistic and planned out open worlds I’ve ever seen. This feels like a real snapshot of a real community. The pathing, roads, bridges, and settlements of various manufacturing plants feel grounded and realistic in their placement. Often, I would just spend hours driving around with my truck, testing the depths of certain flooded roads, using my winch to pull myself out of a tight spot. And, with a friend, you can use their vehicle as an anchor to get out of almost anything.
Much like building a road, you lay the foundation to build upon what is there. This is true with how Mudrunner and Snowrunner have shaped where this series is going. Roadcraft is the culmination of those ideas, mechanics, and gameplay sections to a degree where that complexity and depth is wildly addictive. While Roadcraft is perfectly serviceable and enjoyable as a single-player experience, this might be one of the most enjoyable co-op games I’ve ever played. Roadcraft also does a great job at balancing the realistic and the need to simply be a videogame, and the results are vastly impressive.
Developer - Saber Interactive. Publisher - Focus Home Entertainment. Released - May 20th, 2025. Available On - Xbox Series X/S, PS5, Windows PC. Rated - (E) Mild Language. Platform Reviewed - Xbox Series X. Review Access - Review code was provided by the publisher for the purpose of this review.
Jeff is the original founder of Analog Stick Gaming. His favorite games include The Witcher III, the Mass Effect Trilogy, Hi-Fi Rush, Stellar Blade, Hellbade: Senua’s Sacrifice, and the Legend of Heroes series, especially Trails of Cold Steel III & IV.