December 29, 2023 - Day 363 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 392

Game: Mini Motorways

Platform: Steam
Release Date: Jul 21, 2021
Installation Date: July 27, 2023
Unplayed: 0d
Playtime: 34m

Mini Motorways is a minimalistic cozy top-down traffic puzzle strategy game from New Zealand developers Dinosaur Polo Club. It's a follow-up to their previous railway puzzle strategy game Mini Metro.

Following on from the design aesthetic in Mini Metro, Mini Motorways presents you with a grid, initially containing one stylised house, and one stylised destination, in the same colour, and provides (n) road pieces to join the two.

Cars in that colour will then travel back and forth between the two locations. The destination building will tick, adding an icon for which a matching car is required, with each building having a certain capacity. If the building reaches capacity without enough matching cars reaching it, it's Game Over, man. Game Over.

Each level is presented as a specific major world city, and achieving certain goals in one city will unlock one (or more) cities to play in further levels.

Levels are played on a "weekly" basis using an in-game clock; as the in-game week passes, new destination buildings are added, often in a different colour, with a matching house in the same colour.

These houses can be on the other side of a river, or the other side of the map, or both, and you must use the roads to enable enough vehicles to reach each destination before the building "fills up".

At the end of each week you are given one of two options to choose from for extra pieces for the following week. One option may be 30 road pieces, with the other being a roundabout, with 20 road pieces, or a bridge crossing, with 20 road pieces, or one of several other options including the titular motorway, allowing you to connect distant areas of the map in a single hit.

I broke my guideline of mentioning the developers because in spite of them having only released these two games, I love both of them. Mini Motorways is:

5: Excellent

November 8, 2023 - Day 312 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 331

Game: Almost There: The Platformer

Platform: Steam
Release Date: Feb 19, 2019
Installation Date: Sep 7, 2019
Unplayed: 1523d (4y2m1d)
Playtime: 15m

Almost There: The Platformer is a minimalist 2D platformer.

This game takes everything I hate about platforming games and distils it down into a pure essence: Eau de Platform.

This game makes Celeste feel like a relaxing walk in the hills. Celeste made me want to at least keep trying before giving up in frustration. This made me look up at the clock every thirty seconds wishing for sweet release from my self-imposed straitjacket.

"Almost There" was what I whispered to myself as the clock slowly, painfully ground towards the 15 minute mark.

Almost There requires pinpoint precision to do... well, everything. Beat the timers on each level to get three stars. Land on the tiny platforms. Beat the pointy insta-kill moving spikes. Wall jump to avoid the lasers. Avoid the moving lasers.

The dev describes it as being "designed specifically for fans of the hardcore platforming genre" and playing this made me wish WWE 2K23 *had* finished downloading tonight.

To be clear, this game is not a bad game. This is a game that exists to mock me; a game that exists to remind me that it doesn't matter how hard I try, there are some games that will never be "for" me. That's OK with me.

I hate this game. This is a game that does exactly what it says on the tin, but a game that I will never be able to enjoy.

For lovers of hand-eye co-ordination, this may be the peak of platforming experience, but for me, Almost There: The Platformer is a solid:

1: Nope