HomeReviewsSnowRunner
Wot I Think: SnowRunnerFlatbed head
Flatbed head
Release:April 28thOn:WindowsFrom:Epic Games StoreFor:£35, $40, €40
I took my Chevy to the levee, but the levee wasn’t dry. That’s the problem all over Black River, actually: a recent flood has rendered the soil sodden enough to swallow a car whole. Days of rain have closed the north road out of an already-sleepy Michigan town with rockslides. Power lines are down, too - although that might have more to do with stubborn truck drivers like me attaching winches to them, using their deep roots to pull heavy-duty vehicles from the mud rather than call for recovery.
Why not simply engage all of these helpful measures permanently? Because fuel is a precious resource, and tools like all-wheel drive only burn it more quickly. Running out mid-contract - or losing your Fleetstar to a ditch you underestimated - is a major event, akin to stranding a team of Kerbals on the moon. But therein lies the magic, because the game doesn’t end there. Instead that failure becomes the first act in a rescue story, as you send the sprightly Chevy up the side of a mountain, a carrier full of diesel bouncing along behind it.
As you might already have gathered, despite its title, SnowRunner hasn’t turned its back on temperate climes and muck. But its Alaska maps are undoubtedly the centrepiece, with their frozen lakes and winch-bent trees half buried beneath white powder. I’ve been back and forth over the mechanical merits of snow: while ice-covered roads are dangerous in a new way, threatening to halve the output of your engine if you skid and thump the barrier, being stuck in a pile of white guff isn’t spectacularly different from being stuck in a brown one. You can’t argue, though, with the frightening elementalism of watching headlamps glint off frost, knowing your wheels will hit it next.
Particularly nifty is the ability to port your trucks back and forth between maps. If you lose one in a snow drift and can’t yet afford a bigger vehicle to dredge it out, it’s feasible to head back to Michigan and raise the funds in safer environs. That’s the other children’s story SnowRunner resembles: The Old Lady Who Swallowed A Fly. No matter the size of your stuck truck, you can nearly always send in something heavier. It’s the simplicity of principles like these that makes the ‘Runner games remarkably accessible, even as they grow in complexity and ambition.
Some problems persist. It’s still too easy to show up at an objective and find you don’t have the requisite kit to pick up a load, a discovery that never fails to sap motivation. And when SnowRunner chastises me for leaving a vehicle in the garage exit bay, lest another spawn on top of it, I don’t feel like that should be my issue to fix.
