Tag Archives: Mini Motorways

Introduction:

Both Mini Metro and the studio’s more recent iteration on the formula, Mini Motorways, are a noticeable step up in execution from similar chill takes on the strategy genre such as Islanders and Reus. Unlike those other games, Dinosaur Polo Club’s mini city sims have a deceptively high skill ceiling, bear cohesive and striking visual styles, and include randomized elements in a way that offers a worthwhile challenge and texture rather than a source of frustration.

More than anything, though, what impresses me about Mini Metro and Mini Motorways is their elegance: the restraint of their visuals, including plain flat polygons and muted complementary colors to evoke utilitarian subway maps and route guides; the way their entire soundscapes are reliant on context-dependent sound effects and almost no music, starting things calm and naturally transitioning to a unique and sonorous cacophony later in a round; and the understated deftness of how the complexity of the playfield increases (in part) simply by zooming out the camera at a glacial, almost-imperceptible pace.

But the two games are not created equal. When the developers returned to the drawing board after Mini Metro and altered the design, I feel they took full advantage of that opportunity. Mini Motorways is a great example of what a video game sequel can and should do; despite feeling like an incredibly similar game in terms of both style and substance, it is a noticeable refinement of the template established by Mini Metro in numerous ways, five of which I’ll cover now:

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