Thank You Ultimate Games for providing us with a review code!

Part simulation, and part puzzle, Road Builder for the Switch is a port of the 2021 game of the same name released on Steam that year. After a somewhat confusing tutorial, you’re thrown into a hub world where cars commence their daily rituals and trees are all over. In this hub, you have multiple stages across a few chapters. Completing prerequisites earns up to three stars and a specific number of stars will allow you to move on to the next level.

Within the levels, you have to construct roads and rail crossings so that the vehicles can reach their destination. Sounds simple enough, but once you start incorporating intersections, trains, and different heights, it can soon get complex. You’ll have to do it all within a budget as well. Earning stars means a certain number of vehicles have to safely reach the destination. You have to keep in mind the way you construct your roads too as you can cause traffic jams. So even if you make the right corrections, you may still fail the mission. While the difficulty can fluctuate as some levels in chapter 1 were harder than levels in chapter 3, there are enough of them so that you can sidestep any levels giving you an exceptionally hard time.

Road Builder’s graphics are inspired by toys, so the graphics are simple and reminiscent of plastic and wooded toys. Putting together the pieces can almost invoke a nostalgic feeling. The simple graphics keep the game running at a stable framerate, even when considering the Switch’s outdated hardware. The music consists of simple notes on a piano. It is rather relaxing, but you do have the option to toggle off music to listen to your own.

One thing that did disappoint me is the straightforward porting process of Road Builder. In my opinion, the Switch is the best console in a theoretical sense when considering default controls. The touch screen and gyro controls can lend themselves greatly to puzzles and simulation games. But Road Builder didn’t even attempt to implement those controls. It could have gone a long way, but Road Builder on the Switch does suffer from sluggish controls and a lot of menu navigation with no hotkeys and very few shortcuts.

Moral concerns are almost non-existent. In the hub area, cars can (very softly) crash into each other. It doesn’t cause any notable damage. You can also run into trees and crush them with your car. Unless you’re a tree lover, that aspect won’t be offending many people. The ESRB rated the game Everyone for mild fantasy violence, so I’m going to assume it is about the cars crashing into each other.

Road Builder is one of those games that I can probably recommend for the PC platform but not the Switch—unless the Switch is the only gaming console you own. The reason for my deduction is that the limited Switch controls hold the experience back greatly on a console, making for a rather slow and tedious experience. On the other hand, it is fairly accommodating and runs just fine performance-wise, so people of all ages and styles can easily get into the experience. The hardware specifications on Steam are extremely forgiving (it uses integrated CPU graphics for its minimum settings) so any toaster that came out within the last decade and a half should be able to run it with no problems. Even if your PC is a workstation, I would still make an attempt to purchase it for that platform over the Switch port.