{"id":80756,"date":"2026-07-08T09:41:12","date_gmt":"2026-07-08T01:41:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/?p=80756"},"modified":"2026-07-08T09:41:12","modified_gmt":"2026-07-08T01:41:12","slug":"snowrunner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/?p=80756","title":{"rendered":"Snowrunner"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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I last played Spintires<\/a><\/em> years ago. Since then the series has grown from strength to strength with a dedicated fanbase. This current version of the game has a whopping 18 seasons worth of additional DLC content. I noped out of the previous game before too long because it started to feel too much like real work. The new version has so much more content, a bewildering variety of vehicles and customizable options for them, larger and more complex maps and that means lots more work to do!<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Despite the name, the game starts you off in the decidedly non-wintery map of Michigan. The region has just experienced a flood, explaining the waterlogged terrain, muddy roads and widespread infrastructure damage. Beginning with just a Chevrolet CK1500 pickup truck, your job is to explore the map, access bigger trucks and upgrades and use them to fulfill various contracts and tasks. This usually involves delivering cargo to different dropoff points. Some of these jobs will repair bridges, clear landslides and so open up more of the map. You uncover the fog of war over the map by reaching watchtowers and can collect upgrades for your vehicles that are scattered around. Completing missions earn you promotion and money, unlocking upgrade options and allowing you to buy better vehicles. Many of the contracts involve long journeys from one map to another within the same region. Even without DLCs, the base game includes three regions and each region consists of four maps. That’s plenty of gameplay given that even completing a single map will be arduous, involving many trips across the map and repeated mistakes for those new to the game.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The game looks gorgeous with a proper day\/night cycle. Unlike the drab and repetitive locales of Spintires<\/em>, the maps now have proper towns, there’s plenty of greenery and differences in elevation and there are points of interest like the huge dam in the Michigan region. Exploring is genuinely fun and interesting now as it isn’t just an endless sea of mud. There’s a weather system too but it’s purely cosmetic and doesn’t affect the driving physics. Visibility does matter a great deal so it’s no fun to be trying to chart a path through the woods at night and in the rain. I have a hard time telling if the physics are better but you do have a ton of new options and you need all of it to deal with the conditions the game throws at you. Gating upgrades and better vehicles behind levels also makes it more game-like. At the beginning, you will struggle through the even shallow water with only regular highway tires. It feels so empowering when you grind your way to all terrain, off road and finally mud tires. Earn enough money and you can buy something like the fan favorite Azov 64131 which can power through most anything through sheer brute force.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is unquestionably a better game in every respect than its predecessor. Unlocking watchtowers, upgrades and vehicle options gives it a better sense of progression over time. The maps are well-designed and by that I mean fiendishly frustrating. There might be an obvious and most clear route to a warehouse where you can pick up cargo for example but with a difficult patch of mud in the way. Other times a route might be difficult not because of mud but because it’s too winding, making it almost impossible for long vehicles pulling trailers to navigate, or too narrow. Even an abrupt change in elevation can easily cause problems. Some routes may simply be very long and winding, causing fuel issues. In some cases, you can ignore the trails and try to cut through the terrain as a shortcut at the risk of wasting your time. The variety of different types of challenges ensure that there is no one best vehicle that can do everything. It’s often preferable to use different vehicles to handle different parts of the route, switching the cargo between them as needed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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When I wrote about the first game, I complained about how little technical infomation we get about the capabilities of each vehicle and that’s equally true here. But I’ve also come to realize that the needed information simply can’t be written down. The shape of each truck matters. Its big tires might give it plenty of ground clearance in theoy but its front lip might still hit rocks that are in the way. How each vehicle handles matters and that depends on individual preferences. It really comes down to trial and error. If you get it wrong, it can be be hair-pulling levels of frustration because you’ve put hours into getting your assets into position. But it’s also immensely satisfying to get it right. You can get into the most ridiculous situations, such as getting a semi-trailer stuck in the trees. But the game gives you so many tools so I once managed to get a crane into position to pluck that trailer right out of the treetops. It’s kind of insane and the sort of gameplay only Snowrunner <\/em>can offer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I’d also written earlier about how satisfying it is that this is such a challenging game with no combat involved. Playing this, I’ve come to appreciate more how it calls not for twitch skills, but for patience and diligence. You really do want to use the waypoint system to fully plan out your route. To be efficient, you should be thinking beyond just the current job and consider how you might want to transport cargo to a forward point to plan for future jobs. It’s also very useful to place a fuel tank in parts of the map far from the refuel station. Careful study of the map is very rewarding and I’ve kicked myself so many times for failing to take advantage of the already placed trailers and the cargoes they contain on the map.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Even with perfect knowledge and experience however, this is still a very time-consuming and tedious game. Despite the best of care in placing every tyre in exactly the intended position, it’s still possible to flip a truck and waste a lot of time recovering it. Sometimes there just isn’t an alternative to slowly slogging through thick snow, guzzling fuel. When there you get the maps that don’t have garages or fuel stations, you realize with a sinking feeling just how far some of the driving trips will have to be. This is another game that could easily consume one’s life if you let it and I shudder at the thought of the fans who can’t get enough of their fix from the base game and bought all eighteen seasons of content. I’ve only completed a bare fraction of the first two maps and it’s already taken so much of my time. Part of me wants to keep on going because there’s an addictive quality to making slow steady progress and unlocking new toys. But the more rational part of me knows that I’ll have to drop this if I ever want to play anything else for the rest of the year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I last played Spintires years ago. Since then the series has grown from strength to strength with a dedicated fanbase. This current version of the game has a whopping 18 seasons worth of additional DLC content. I noped out of the previous game before too long because it started to feel too much like real … Continue reading Snowrunner<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-80756","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-games"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80756","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=80756"}],"version-history":[{"count":73,"href":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80756\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":80986,"href":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80756\/revisions\/80986"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=80756"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=80756"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=80756"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}