I've been looking for a new game to unwind with on Steam Deck in the evenings, something casual and chill that will relax me after a long day. After considering a few farming sims and cozy adventure games, I stumbled on Mini Motorways, a transportation strategy sim that looked promising.
It's a game about drawing roads so itty bitty colorful cars can get where they need to go. It looked extremely chill, and most promising was the "Overwhelmingly Positive" review score on Steam.
But just to be sure before I spent my money, I did a quick skim of some of the Steam reviews of Mini Motorways before buying.
A little too quick.
"Honestly a very fun and relaxing game," said one Steam reviewer. "A great game to just sit back, relax and don't stress."
"It is calm and relaxing 10/10" said another.
What I failed to notice was that several users had marked those reviews as "Funny." I'm no stranger to joke reviews on Steam, but at a glance none of these set off any alarm bells. So, I didn't look any further, though if I had I would have seen reviews that say things like this:
"Mini Motorways is a dystopian horror story disguised as a traffic sim" wrote a reviewer whose review I did not read.
"It was chill. Until it wasn't," another reviewer warned.
"One of the finest survival horror games I have ever experienced," a third said.
Alas, I was simply too impatient to relax and feel calm! Quick, Add to Cart, View My Cart, Continue to Payment, and yes, yes, yes I agree to the terms of the Steam Subscriber Agreement (last updated Sep 26, 2024). C'mon, Steam, just let me spend money! Why do I have to constantly reassure you that I blindly agree to that long legal document I've never bothered to read?
More embarrassingly, I didn't even bother to check the website I have worked on for the past decade (PC Gamer dot com) where Katie Wickens posted some useful information about Mini Motorways in 2021:
"It seems like you're in for a very Zen experience," Katie attempted to warn me four years ago, but "as your city gradually grows from a sparse cluster of homes and businesses into a raging metropolis, prepare to have your brain muscles worked to their problem-solving limits."
After downloading and playing for an hour, I quickly realized I'd gone wrong and instead of a mindless distraction, this game was making me think. Sure, it was relaxing for a bit, drawing roads so little orange cars could get to little orange buildings and little red cars could get to little red buildings. But as my cities grew and my roadways became more labyrinthine and I had to deal with traffic snarls and roundabouts and bridges and the endless arrival of more colorful cars needing to get to their colorful buildings, I realized this was not some calm, cute, mindless little time waster. This is a race against the clock that inevitably ends in failure.
This is a good time to mention that I'm quite happy I did such a bad job reading reviews and ignoring the work of my colleagues because I really am enjoying Mini Motorways—those Overwhelmingly Positive reviews are well-deserved. I do find it relaxing and calm for a little while—it just doesn't last. As my city grows and every questionable decision haunts me, it does pretty quickly become a tense and stressful affair. It's nice, though, that despite failing with every single city I build, the game does give me a chance to continue playing in endless mode.
So if you're looking for a calm and relaxing game, but maybe you're really looking for a brain-exercising challenge, check out Mini Motorways: it's only 10 bucks on Steam, and so is its predecessor, Mini Metro, which is about trains instead of cars.
