Unforgettable Triumph: Navigating the Challenges of RoadCraft’s Steam Next Fest Demo

If you haven’t played MudRunner or SnowRunner, it might be difficult to articulate the allure of what can only be described as a vehicular survival game – one where you navigate expansive off-road terrain and strive not to get bogged down in some of the most gloriously sticky mud you could ever encounter in a video game. The Steam Next Fest showcase for RoadCraft, the upcoming title from developer Saber Interactive, is drawing “mixed” feedback from fans of the series who believe it lacks the hardcore elements of its predecessors; however, my 40 minutes with the demo were completely intense.

RoadCraft intentionally omits some elements present in earlier titles, such as vehicle damage and fuel, but you will still be navigating through a variety of indescribably muddy paths. The demo’s initial mission simply requires you to drive an SUV across the map, and within just five minutes, I had managed to flip that vehicle upside down in about 10 feet of mud. Thankfully, you can always “recover” your vehicle to its starting point.

Upon reaching that goal, you need to chop down a few trees using a tree processor – a piece of equipment I wasn’t aware existed until today. Maneuver the treaded vehicle towards a tree, wrap its claws around it, and it will chop the tree down and strip it of every limb. This moment was probably the best part of the demo.

Next came the challenging aspect: loading all those logs onto a trailer. This truck has a crane that you can use to pick up and place harvested logs, granting full control over its vertical, horizontal, and lateral movements. It’s a real workout, and it’s incredibly tedious. Maneuvering even just one log onto the trailer was a nail-biting dexterity challenge that took me far longer than I would like to admit, and then I had to repeat the process two more times to actually complete my task. Folks, by the time I had transported that load – consisting of precisely three logs – across the map, I was practically cheering with excitement.

I thoroughly enjoyed the RoadCraft demo, although more dedicated SnowRunner fans than I have rated the demo at a 55% positive “mixed” rating on Steam, mainly complaining about the absence of the previous game’s more detailed mechanics. RoadCraft is not quite as survival-centric as its forerunners, as it leans more heavily towards logistics and, essentially, road creation.

The latter portions of the demo – which I unfortunately did not have time to experience – explore those road-construction mechanics in greater depth, and the gameplay trailer above offers compelling glimpses into what you could accomplish. It seems that RoadCraft aims to provide a literal sandbox where you can simply drop piles of dirt to construct your own bridges or larger roads, genuinely reshaping the environment to meet your needs. The prospect of doing it all in four-player co-op makes that concept significantly more enticing, and we’ll see how everything unfolds when RoadCraft launches for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X on May 20.

The developers behind my favorite indie fighting game are creating an open-world bicycle racing game, and its Steam Next Fest demo exceeded my expectations.

Dustin Bailey joined the GamesRadar team as a Staff Writer in May 2022 and is currently based in Missouri. He has been covering games (with occasional forays into the realms of anime and professional wrestling) since 2015, initially as a freelancer, and subsequently as a news writer at PCGamesN for almost five years. His passion for gaming was sparked somewhere between Metal Gear Solid 2 and Knights of the Old Republic, and these days, you can often find him dividing his entertainment time between retro gaming, the latest big action-adventure title, or a long haul in American Truck Simulator.