Mini Motorways

Take charge of the transit system of a growing city overflowing with the dumbest, most in the way citizens imaginable. 10/10

BUY IT

Super enjoyable and challenging game. Easy to grasp and nice, minimalistic graphics and layout. Great start to city-building games, as it's super simple and approachable at that.

Really relaxing puzzle game but quickly becomes difficult and stressful as time goes on. The music and design is very well-made and the slow expansion of the map is very clever. Aesthetically it's modern and cool, and there are so many maps.

This is a great, relaxed game; aesthetically it's modern and cool, the gameplay has depth, and there are so many maps.

I would say it's price of £7.19 is a stretch, but it's a decent mini-game.

Buy it on offer and its 100% worth it.

Great fun. It's kind of relaxing at the same time as being hectic. It's well worth the purchase if you like to zone out for a while.

Really fun game but you do need to be patienet for it other than that its a great game and defenetly worth your money

This game pulled me away from Baldurs Gate 3. 10/10 fully recommend getting mad at traffic you made yourself.

Dope and addictive game. Very fun. Easy to play for hours but quick enough to hop on for 45 minutes to get your fix.

The most stressful thing is when you're out of road tiles but the game offers you 30 road tiles or a motorway

great little game, feels like a classic one! wihat i like is that you may play for 15 minutes and you have fun, and you may stuck if you wish for an hour and still not get bord of it. Great one!

Sometimes, when the going gets rough, all that will save your stress is Mini Motorways. Simple yet engaging puzzles that always end with the demise of civilisation.

Mini Motorways is a gem that has earned a permanent spot on my hard drive. It strikes the perfect balance of challenge and enjoyment, making it a game I can return to time and time again. If you’re in search of an engaging experience that keeps you entertained indefinitely, look no further.

Simple yet addictive. Brilliant design, lovely soundtrack and deceptively hard to master. Love this game! Really keen to improve and strategise.

Sorry, but compared to Mini Metro, this one ramps up way to quickly and the spawn locations are way too random.

The random spawning locations throw too many monkeywrenches and you barely have enough options to improvise on the spot.

Very relaxing and beautiful game. Even though it might seem repetitive to some people the more I play I find myself trying to implement different tactics with the different tools provided. The cities keep evolving in ways that always form unique and interesting shapes: I keep finding more and more interesting shapes I haven't seen which inspire me for my 3D art. Although the city's development might seem out of the player's choice, one can still affect it and/or set his own rules for the city (for example diagonal roads).

fun and it helps relax you and gives you some time to let your brain be at work but not over or underworked

Mini Motorways is the kind of game that asks, "Do you want to experience the stress of rush hour, but with the soothing ambiance of soft music and pastel colours?" Spoiler alert: the answer is yes, you do. It’s like SimCity, but instead of building a whole town, you’re just trying to prevent your little pixelated citizens from experiencing the joy of endless traffic jams. Which, by the way, you will fail at—and it will be glorious.

The game starts innocently enough. A couple of houses here, a store there. You draw a nice little road, connect the dots, and feel like an urban planning genius. “Look at me,” you think. “I’ve got this. I should be in charge of real cities!” And then, suddenly, bam—out of nowhere, a red house pops up across the river, and now your perfect little road network has become a nightmare spaghetti bowl of highways, bridges, and panic.

The basic gameplay consists of dragging roads between coloured houses and their corresponding businesses, but things get tricky faster than you can say “gridlock.” At first, it feels like you’re solving a simple puzzle. By minute ten, it's more like you’re playing Twister with roads, desperately trying to keep the flow of cars going while your brain quietly melts. But hey, at least the game is kind enough to remind you of your failures with a calm, "Oh no, traffic has gotten out of control!"—as if it wasn’t your fault that you thought a single-lane road could handle 50 cars.

Ah, and let’s talk about roundabouts. In real life, they’re meant to help with traffic flow. In Mini Motorways, they’re more like tiny, circular hubs of disaster. You drop one down with the hope of easing congestion, only to realise you've accidentally created a vortex of eternal gridlock, where cars endlessly orbit like confused bees around a flower. It’s a beautiful mess.

Don’t even get me started on traffic lights. You’d think these would bring order to the chaos, right? Wrong. All they do is create little car parking lots at every intersection while you sit there, watching helplessly as your entire city backs up for miles. Fun fact: in Mini Motorways, the only thing traffic lights do reliably is test your patience.

The real joy of the game comes from the moments where you think you’ve finally cracked it. You’ll place a highway, confident that it’ll solve all your problems. "This is it," you say, admiring your work. "I've built the perfect city." But, as soon as you breathe that sigh of relief, a green house spawns on the opposite side of the map, and suddenly, you’re sending cars on a cross-country road trip just to get milk from the store.

In conclusion, Mini Motorways is an adorable and deceptively stressful puzzle game that will make you question everything you thought you knew about urban planning. It lures you in with its charming simplicity and then turns your brain into a traffic control centre on the verge of collapse. But don’t worry—when your entire city comes to a standstill and your roads look like they were designed by a particularly vengeful toddler, you can always start over and pretend it never happened.

Really enjoying this game. The soundtrack is amazing and really puts you into the zone. Time flies and a 40 minute session map can feel like 10.

Pros
+ Relaxing and Engaging: The minimalist visuals and simple gameplay mechanics create a soothing yet challenging experience.
+ Creative Problem-Solving: Designing efficient road networks for growing cities requires strategic thinking and adaptability.
+ Endless Replayability: Each city presents unique challenges, encouraging experimentation and exploration.
+ Satisfying Progression: The feeling of expanding your network and improving traffic flow is very rewarding.
+ Accessible Fun: The core concept is easy to grasp, making it enjoyable for players of all skill levels.

Cons
- Limited Complexity: The gameplay mechanics remain relatively simple throughout.
- Lack of Deep Customization: While there are some options for changing the visuals, the core gameplay elements remain consistent.

This game is amazing and kinda addictive make me feel like real civil engineer 100% recommend worth the money

I can't count the hours I played (and still play from time to time) Mini Metro on my phone. Needless to say I was eager to try its successor! I was surprised, and not disappointed!

Gameplay-wise, I find the same fun as I did in Mini Metro that I didn't find in any other game yet: You get to start a quick game and play at your own pace, with pleasing visuals and sound design.

You can play with the game at full speed or pause for hours to get your network just right. You can solely focus on the game and its audio or listen to something else on the side : you don't have to read anything, calculate anything, your time is infinite and you get to draw your answer to the questions the game throws at you, whether it's an optimized solution or a creative solution.

It's amazing really and I think that's the core of the "Mini Series" experience that makes these games great. In that sense, I'm eager to see Dinosaur Polo Club's next projects, even if they diverge from this core philosophy somewhat!

While this is a great comfort game, here's a few things I feel could be improved about the game:


1- The best strategy is not the most fun strategy

I often remember this point from Mark Rosewater's GDC conference: "The fun part of your game should also be the correct strategy to win".

Well, for Mini Motorways, that's complicated. Half the upgrades you get are Red Lights and Roundabouts. Amazing! I want to use them! They're so fun to watch too!
After sometime you realize that actually, the best strategy is just to minimize intersections as much as possible. Oh, and actually, you should not feel good about putting down a roundabout, that means there's an intersection, you should figure out a way to avoid it.

That's a point I find frustrating. The game doesn't really incentivize you to get creative with intersections, as everything runs smoother when it's well separated. It's its own kind of fun, but then I feel like my upgrades are not really exciting.

I get that this is a natural consequence of making a game about traffic, but it's still a little feels bad you get while playing.


2- No CTRL + Z

Sometimes you want to make a precise change and a slip up ruins everything in your city (this is made worse as I play with my laptop's trackpad).

Especially during the first hours of play I would have loved to be able to cancel my last action with the press of a button, as one inadvertent slip can have a lot of consequences on your city and waste a lot of your time.


3- Making big changes feels clunky

This might be more of a personal thing, but I loved how easy it was to change your tracks in Mini Metro, and even rearrange your whole network in the middle of a game if you feel like it.

I really don't like how Mini Motorways doesn't allow you to smoothly replace a bridge or a highway unless you have another one available (and for bridges, it's complicated even if you do have one extra as they don't cross).

As a result, these elements feel more stiff and I don't feel like I'm free to rearrange these aspects of the network at all. Anyways, this one might just be a skill issue on my part :P


4- More map variety?

While I do like the map variety, I would love to see more "Gimmicks" be integrated with new maps. I love the three tramways maps for that reason, they truly offer something that makes them feel more alive and distinct than other maps.

With such an extensive map pool, I feel like you could experiment more with novel mechanics, even if they're not liked by everyone, without frustrating players who like the core experience more.

In Mini Metro, I loved the maps which had Shinkansen or multiple interchanges, as they gave you more agency and let you give different roles to different lines. I'd love to see something similar done in Mini Motorways, some mechanic which allows you to hierarchize your roads and make you feel like your designs are structured thought through.



Anyways, thank you so much for making the game, I'm looking forward to all your future projects! I hope more games similar to the Mini Series get published in the future :)

Very highly recommended.
Simple yet complicated mini-game from the same creator as Mini Metro. Its cheaper on mobile if you're fine with dealing with mobile controls, though keep in mind you can buy it on steam and use steam link to stream it to your phone if you're not concerned about data/wifi. Also has a dark mode.
Lots of different maps but they don't make too terribly much of a difference, mostly minor color differences, whether you have rivers and bridges or mountains and tunnels, and the layout of the rivers/mountains.



Basically, as you spawn in, houses and businesses will randomly begin to spawn in wherever the hell they want. Every business gets what I'll call an 'order' for the sake of simplicity, and each order must be picked up by a car within a certain amount of time. If too many orders stack up on one business, a timer will appear, and if the timer runs out, your city shuts down, which you obviously have to avoid for as long as possible. The hunger of your businesses can only be satiated by cars/houses of the same color as each individual business, and you must connect them with roads. You have to use a bridge to go over a river/a tunnel to go through a mountain if one is in your way. Every in-game week (time can be sped up) you'll receive a new package with more roads and additional bridges, 2 traffic lights, a roundabout, a motorway which cuts over all roads and other motorways to get it's traffic from end to end (also over mountains and rivers), or even more roads.
Its much simpler in design and to play than it is to explain, you'll figure it out, the controls are intuitive.
Finally, don't get too upset if your score isn't too terribly high. In some particularly lucky cases put in the hands of particularly skilled players, you can just get a self-sustaining city which eventually has to be manually shut down if you want the score on the leaderboard.

Also check out Mini Metro if you enjoy this game. Same premise but with trains and stations, a different connection system, and different special things every week. I have it on my phone but not Steam (yet?).

I first tried Mini Metros and fell in love. Then I got this! The organization aspect and the planning is so fun. I am enthralled with this game

mostly chill game, with nice music and simple gameplay

Really relaxing puzzle game but quickly becomes difficult and stressful as time goes on.
Played the first level and lasted an hour which felt like 20 mins...

The music and design is very well-made and the slow expansion of the map is very clever.

I'm really enjoying this game so far, hope you do to :D

This is an incredibly fun game that has entertained me for hours. Simple and easy to learn. The various maps and challenges keep it unique where the zoning, geography, and game-play modifiers may force different ways of solving the problem. My main nit about it is sometimes I have difficulty over the control of road creation/deletion.

Relaxing, stressful and fun all at once.

very satisfying. easy to pause and resume doesnt take too much of my attention and is not super insense

This is just fine, very lovely game, I like all about it: the design, feeling of all intereations, and obviously the plot and idea. 10/10, would recommend to most of my friend to try for at least 1 hour - wouldn't regret it for sure!

It is a pretty causal game that you can play. I often play to de-stress or pass the time. The simplicity of it makes it even easier to pick up and play.

This game may be simple, but it is simply fun. I really couldn't do it justice. Do yourself a favor and give it a try and I think you'll agree it's enjoyable enough to keep playing.

This game is a relaxing and chalenging game Its very fun and I play it on my down time.

Such a simple concept, yet so addictive. Hint: You gotta keep 'em separated!

One of my go-to relaxing zen-like management and organizational game. It's really a beautifully designed game. Highly recommend.

Traffic control

I bought this because I was in the mood for a casual game to play while having my morning coffee. 6 hours later I finally started my day. It's really engaging, but you don't need to be a civil engineer to find it interesting

Overall Rating: 4.5/5 Stars

Pros:

Simple Yet Engaging Gameplay: Mini Motorways offers a straightforward concept that quickly becomes addictive. Players design and manage road networks to connect homes and workplaces, balancing efficiency and growth in a fun and intuitive way.
Charming Aesthetic: The game features a vibrant, minimalist art style that is visually appealing. The colorful design makes each map inviting, while the clean interface ensures players can focus on their city-building efforts without distractions.
Dynamic Challenges: Each playthrough presents new challenges, with traffic patterns and city growth evolving over time. This unpredictability keeps the gameplay fresh, requiring players to adapt their strategies as they progress.
Relaxing Soundtrack: The calming music and sound effects enhance the overall experience, creating a soothing atmosphere that makes it easy to get lost in the gameplay for extended periods.
Short Play Sessions: The game is designed for quick play sessions, making it perfect for those looking for a casual gaming experience. The ability to jump in and out of the game is a significant plus for busy players.
Cons:

Limited Endgame Content: While the game is enjoyable, some players may find that the long-term goals can feel somewhat repetitive. After mastering the mechanics, the challenge might diminish, leading to a desire for more varied objectives or modes.
Occasional Frustration: As cities grow and traffic increases, players can encounter moments of overwhelming congestion. This can lead to abrupt game-ending scenarios that may feel unfair or frustrating, particularly in the later stages.
Lack of Depth: While the game is engaging, some players may seek a deeper simulation experience. There could be more complexity in terms of road types, vehicles, or city management options to add variety.
No Multiplayer Features: Mini Motorways is a single-player experience, which might disappoint those looking for competitive or cooperative gameplay with friends.
Recommendation: I highly recommend Mini Motorways to fans of puzzle and strategy games. Its simple mechanics, charming visuals, and engaging gameplay create an enjoyable experience that is both relaxing and challenging. While the limited endgame content and occasional frustration might detract from the experience for some players, the overall design and dynamic challenges make it a delightful addition to any gaming library. If you're looking for a game that tests your strategic thinking while offering a casual yet addictive experience, Mini Motorways is definitely worth trying.

In its early moments, Mini Motorways is blissful brain rot, allowing you to turn off your brain and enjoy the quiet satisfaction of your small, smoothly operating city.

But as your city grows and the demands of its drivers become more intense, the game shifts to something more complex, more strategic, and more thoughtful than any trailer would make you believe.

The magic of Mini Motorways is each game lasts a quick 10-20 minutes, and each minute informs and bears consequences for the next. By the time your game ends, you will have revised, adjusted, and thought over every move you've made countless times, all in an effort to achieve that unattainable perfect traffic flow.

Literally Cities: Skylines Lite... Or Cities: Skylines GO!... Or Cities: Skylines Mini... Or Cities: Skylines Roguelike edition

Jokes aside, quite an enjoyable strategy game that you can play to burn some time! Though, I wish there were more things they could've done/add to make the game a tad bit more enticing/engaging, I'd say... Like, how there should be more ways to mitigate the traffic that tends to get literally crazy after a few minutes aside from the mediocre non-customisable timing traffic lights, one-lane roundabouts, or the limited highway bypasses that you'd rarely get...

But, at the end of the day, I'd still recommend to get this game as it's a small, but fun and engaging strategy game that may make you get addicted, especially if you're the strategist type or even a Cities: Skylines player!

Sometimes autism needs an outlet. Sometimes seeing how efficiently cars move around a roundabout is that outlet. To each their own, ya know?

As a Mini Motorways fan, returning to this game on PC was really nice and relaxing, just making roads and watching the people driving around so they can visit their local Imax cinema, Its just a nice little game until the city shuts down. Man just play it.

So peaceful! The sound design is absolutely next level. Addicting.

Mini Motorways is a game that instantly reminds me of an app my dad showed me when I was little. I can’t help but wonder if the same creators developed this gem on Steam! It’s a simple yet incredibly addicting game that keeps you coming back for more. The gameplay mechanics are straightforward, but there’s so much depth to explore as you build and manage your roadways. I can’t complain—this game is a fantastic blend of nostalgia and engaging strategy!

It's great fun to play this on a computer from having played the iPad version in the past. Challenging and fun, can't do the cheeky "ghost line" method in Mini Metro to take advantage in this game. Hoping to see some Australian cities featured in the future.

Mini Mortorways is a well-made, tycoon-like city game where you're tasked to make roads, tunnels and bridges for cars to get to their destinations on time.

It's quite fun and relaxing to play, but also has a hint of challenge to it.

It's great that every run is different, and challenges are available for extra spice

I highly reccomend this game if you're looking to have fun, in a calm manner

I do wish it were a bit less random, this would make it more consistently a puzzle that can actually be solved every play thru. But it's still fine, fun enough, plenty good.

this game is incredibly fun, i just wish segregation wasnt such a dominant strategy. its nearly impossible to get competitive scores without it, and also, thats just NOT how cities are actually built, you know? but direct routes from houses to their destinations is the only way to get even close to the <10% bracket so i guess thats how the meta shook out

that means its not a great city-planning sim, but its still a really really wonderful puzzle game!!! definitely worth the price since theres a TON of maps and extra challenges included

A game that literally entails getting from point "A" to point "B." This is one of those games to come back to and relax after working all day and not wanting to rage at some punks over an in-game chat. I've had Youtube videos play in the background as I've played this game.

For a bit more context, you start off with a house, garage? We'll just say a worker for now, as they have to get to their colored workplace. Your sole job, is traffic control. Build roads, bridges, motorways, and control them with roundabouts, and stop lights. As the game progresses, the workers grow, and the workplaces get more erratic to get to. It's a good experience to watch those lesser than you struggle to do their job as you hold power over them.

It's a very enjoyable game and fun to play every once in a while after a long day.