Mini Motorways mini-review

Conceptually brilliant and aesthetically clean, Mini Motorways boils a city simulation down to the bare essentials of managing roadway traffic. Sure, it sounds a bit unexciting at first, but you’ll probably find yourself glued to your Switch, attempting to unsnarl suburban paths. 

Managing traffic is a thankless task in most city simulations. While you’re constructing high-rises, stadiums, housing, and recreational centers, the eyesore of bumper-to-bumper traffic always seems to defile your civic aspirations. But that’s not the case with Mini Motorways, which arrived on Switch following its Apple Arcade debut and subsequent PC port. Here, arranging the flow of cars feels oddly blissful.

Instead of being concerned with zoning, budgets, and a perpetually overburdened power grid, Motorway narrows its focus on creating a functional network of roads, allowing the game’s tiny people to travel frustration-free to work. In both the interactive tutorial and each of the city-themed stages, houses and offices begin appearing on the map. The buildings are color-colored, so you’ll want to create a roadway that connects green houses with the corresponding workplace. Like any good sim, it starts off deceptively easy. But offices have dedicated entryways. Before long these can stymie the structure of any developing city.

Soon, additional structures spawn, gradually revealing more of Mini Motorways’ minimalistic landscape. Housing communities pop away further from job sites and you’ll probably feel the first pangs of restrained resources. But make it to end of each in-game week, and you’ll be able to pick from two different awards packages. Increasingly, these become your city’s lifeline, prohibiting workers from becoming stranded.

Each weekly selection requires a bit of foresight. You might opt for a thirty road tiles to help offset the emergence of a remote housing complex. But having a bridge at the ready can be invaluable in towns lined with waterways. Alternatively, packages that combines a few traffic lights or a roundabout with road tiles can help soothe congestion. Then, there’s the game’s signature motorway, which can create an expressway of almost any length, even over bodies of water. Used prudently, there can help reduce the gridlock that’s congesting you most traveled roads.

Largely, the game’s journey to Switch is competent. While there’s no support for touchscreen input or the directional buttons, using the analog stick to lay down and erase roads is snappy. The only real issue that areas around roundabouts can become cluttered with residual corners and bends, messing up an otherwise clean-looking municipality. For features like stoplights, roundabouts, or motorways, you’ll have to select the feature from the far-left side of the screen before determining a place for construction.

Mini Motorways offers a framerate that remains fluid even when your urban sprawl is crawling with activity and the game’s camera is zoomed out to capture the region. Pleasingly, there’s an option for a night mode, which can help avoid eye strain when playing the game in darkened spaces. Although there’s not too much variation across Motorways’ different cities, color variations and key waterways make an appearance. Sure, Tokyo doesn’t look fundamentally different from Los Angeles, but the presence of pink Sakura and the Sumida River provide a suggestion of locality.

Mini Motorways manages to make the mundane chore of traffic control incredibly captivating. If you enjoy simulations that eschew simple cause-and-effect relationships, the game’s accessible but deep take on civil engineering belongs on your Switch. Where else can you have a hand in the rise and fall of a metropolis with in fifteen-minute episode?

Mini Motorways was played on Switch with review code provided by the publisher.