It’s been a while since I first saw Roadcraft in action (more than six months since Gamescom 2024, actually), and I can’t hide the fact that with each passing week I felt more and more eager to see what Saber Interactive were creating behind the scenes. And now the time has come, the game is great, I’ll describe its highlights, and I’ll also show you how to download Roadcraft for free.
The idea of the game is quite noble, not only as something new in the formula, but also as an experimental field, at least for the terrain destruction system in the new version of the engine. This is a very ambitious project, and one that marks a completely new development path for the developers and subsequent simulation projects after the brilliantly received (and surprisingly still being developed with successive seasons) Snowrunner.
In the beginning there was chaos…
One thing you should know before playing the demo version of Roadcraft is that there are three missions of varying complexity to choose from, and although there are tutorial elements, the feeling is that it would be much better to learn the game from the beginning and gradually.
It turns out that the first mission, which is supposed to be the easier one, can be a bit more difficult than the second or third. It all depends on understanding the operation of individual machines, beyond the traditional scout car familiar from Snowrunners or Mudrunners, and at least the woodcutter.
So if you can’t figure out how to tame a particular mechanic, it’s worth restarting your progress on the map or starting with something else. That said, they’re all within everyone’s reach, and there’s more than one way to do them. After all, you don’t have to toe the only right party line… do you?
Roadcraft is not just about building roads
Now that we’ve got the introduction out of the way, a few words about what goes with what in Roadcraft. The most important thing to know is this: although the game’s title suggests that it is a simulator for an employee of the General Directorate of National Roads and Highways, it is in fact a whole host of different tasks that need to be carried out in order to repair the damage caused by various elements.
What’s more, these elements keep showing up, whether it’s heavy rain or sandstorms. Do they have a significant effect on the destruction of the terrain? I haven’t noticed that, although it would be pretty hardcore (and fun) if the terrain was even more difficult to work on after the rainfall on the destroyed terrain.
However, what I wrote above remains in the realm of dreams, because whatever else we may say, this new model of terrain layering and its effect on the capabilities of different types of machines can make driving them quite a challenge.
After all, for some reason vehicles carrying heavy equipment have been introduced here, as there is no way we can easily drive a roller through a section where there is no asphalt. It’s also easy to forget to lower the bulldozer’s shovel… and tear up a few metres of asphalt.
The simulation layer is very large
In other words, whereas in Snowrunner, Mudrunner or Expeditions we had several types of machines for essentially the same type of game, in Roadcraft this variety is greater and combined with the renewal of machines, the construction of tracks with given resources, it becomes more of a simulation game with many different economic elements, which fans of additional management should probably like.
And it’s for this reason that I see this as an excellent starting point for cooperative play, as the previously announced up to four-player cross-play means that all this variety of machines and tasks can offer more room for teamwork than in previous Saber games. After all, it’s much easier to imagine two friends building a road, another transporting equipment to another end of the map, and a fourth clearing paths for resource convoys. There’s something for everyone.
Graphically, it looks really good!
While playing on native settings under Ultra is quite demanding, the mix of Ultra with DLSS in performance mode and 4K enabled actually made it safe to say that it could be native settings after all. On the other hand, we also ran the game on a laptop several years old with an RTX 3050 Ti and AMD Ryzen 5 5600H, but here we had to make more serious concessions with DLSS support. At the end of the day, it should laugh.
The desert map doesn’t quite do justice to the engine’s capabilities, so the map associated with the clearing of the forest, combined with the occasional rain, will make it hard to look at previous games in the same way. They will still be nice games, but this level will probably be hard to relate to. The only unknown is, as always, the consoles, although I am hopeful that a golden mean can be found for the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X.
Click the button below to find out how you can get your hands on Roadcraft for free.
- Here is the link to purchase the game: God of War: Ragnarok
- Genre: Simulator Games
- Supported languages: ES/ENG/MULTi
How to download Roadcraft for free?
- Click the button in the body of the article
- Perform all the necessary steps of the process
- Complete a task to get the password
- Install the game and enjoy a high-level experience. The game is copyrighted – support developers
Roadcraft system requirements
Minimum:
- Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
- OS: Windows 10 (18362 min)/11 64-bit
- Processor: AMD Ryzen 5 1500X / Intel Core i5-8400
- Memory: 8 GB RAM
- Graphics: AMD Radeon RX 590 / Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 / Intel ARC A580
- Storage: 40 GB available space
Recommended:
- Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
- OS: Windows 10 (18362 min)/11 64-bit
- Processor: AMD Ryzen 7 5800X / Intel Core i5-12600K
- Memory: 16 GB RAM
- Graphics: AMD Radeon RX 6600 XT / Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 / Intel ARC B580
- Storage: 40 GB available space