Trailmakers

For fans of Minecraft, Lego Dimensions, and many other indie games, Trailmakers is an exploration and building game that focuses on making awesome vehicles to explore the game’s vibrant world. Make tracks on the ground, soar in the air or explore the ocean depths with whatever your mind can come up with in this unique genre mashup.

If you’re someone that likes building, inventing or racing, then Trailmakers is an excellent sandbox game with a lot to offer. With a unique twist on the sandbox genre, Trailmakers manages to stand out from the crowd thanks to its bombastic vehicles and emphasis on high-speed racing.

Bits and Pieces

Players familiar with Lego Dimensions will feel right at home with Trailmakers. The game operates using a very similar style where you control a small character that can build structures out of individual blocks. Rather than adopting a first-person view like Minecraft, Trailmakers is third person, giving the world a much wider feeling, which works much better with the game’s focus on vehicular mechanics.

The blocks that make up the vehicles that players will build have an unmistakable resemblance to Lego. While creatively a bit banal, the familiarity gives an instant sense of understanding of how players can quickly make the ideas in their heads a reality. All players need to do is simply click blocks together to make basic ideas, and the intuitive vehicle creator makes fairly complex construction very simple from there.

While once in early access, the game now boasts a full release with tons of content to explore. The vehicle mechanics are simple to pick up but offer almost limitless fun and experimentation. All you need to do is explore the Steam Workshop to see some of the insane vehicles that are possible to make with Trailmaker’s ingenious building mechanics.

Story? What Story?

Fans of narrative games may not find much here since Trailmakers emphasises the player’s own creativity rather than any pre-made story. The ‘story’ of the game is that you start on a barren planet with little much to do. Your only real goal is to immediately start exploring and building your first vehicle. As you begin to travel much greater distances in your first vehicle you’ll find scrap resources across the world. These give you more blocks to play around with, and a cycle of looting and upgrading quickly takes hold.

Part Lego, part Banjo Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts, players will make their own fun by building cool and wacky vehicles to traverse the game’s various terrains. To add to this, there are a number of gamemodes for players to try out that add a bit of extra variety to keep things interesting. Stranded in Space is the game’s main mode, but there are also racing multiplayer modes, a sandbox mode and even a battle mode!

Life in the Fast Lane

The game also focuses heavily on racing. There are several ways to partake in rallies and races, and getting first place with a vehicle that you created is always satisfying for the player. Whether you want to race on land, sea or sky, the game offers fast paced gameplay that runs buttery smooth for an optimum adrenaline rush.

PROS

• Fun for all ages
• Simple to learn but offers endless complexity the more you play
• Great exploration and creativity options

CONS

• No story mode or narrative
• Wouldn’t recommend to people who dislike creative games