What’s in a name?
Names are important when it comes to Mini Motorways.
That’s in part because names are important when it comes to cities.
I’m not anywhere.
I’m not nowhere.
I’m back in LA.
And names are important when it comes to modes, maybe?
Mini Motorways' latest update adds two new modes to the game.
The first is Endless, which is pretty self-explanatory.
The second is Expert, which is absolutely brutal and brilliant.
Expert mode is certainly a real challenge.
The idea is quietly alarming.
Get your roundabouts and motorways in fast.
The other wrinkle is so terrifying I feel like I should whisper it: decisions are permanent.
There’s a touch of the exam board chill to that one.
Yes, this makes the game incredibly tough, and in a rather brilliant way.
So much of Mini Motorways is fretting about where future parts of the city are going to turn up.
You don’t decide that, after all.
You just have to connect it with roads once it’s arrived.
But now, every road you place down?
Well, you really think about it.
In some ways, certainly.
The other side of that, though, is luck.
What I love about this is how much of a surprise it is to me.
This has been expertise as I’ve seen it up until now in my Mini Motorways education.
It’s realising, five minutes in, that an entire town centre needs to be erased and restructured.
Knowing when your city should move from one kind of shape to another.
It’s been a game, in other words, where the sunk cost fallacy will actually kill you.
I thought this was brilliant.
Is that the case here, or is it something different?
I’m deep into Expert mode now, and it’s completely changed the way I see the game.
With this mode on, I tend to think of Mini Motorways almost like a roguelike.
In roguelikes you make the most of the life you have.
