Living in Brisbane, I have much to complain about when it comes to traffic. With an old man’s grumpy demeanour, I am more than happy to whip out the Zimmer Frame, shake my fist, and loudly declare “Back in my day” to anyone that will or won’t listen. Well, the time has come to put my money where my mouth is. Developer and publisher MS Games have brought us Road Builder, a traffic flow puzzle game.

Being a logic puzzle game there is no story. You are given three options of play: Puzzle mode, Custom mode, and Map Editor mode. The puzzle mode is all that you would expect it to be – Solve puzzles and earn enough stars to open the next level. Custom mode allows you to play custom-made levels, and Map Editor mode gives you a sandbox to play with all the toys, allowing you to save your creations to be played in custom mode.

Now, fair warning, the first three rows will get wet from gushing. Ponchos can be found under your seat. The graphics of the world map and the vehicles for this game spoke heavily to my nostalgia. The hand-crafted wooden look reminded me of my childhood growing up.

The wooden toy vehicles I got from my parents and the time spent playing with them in the sandpit. Making roads, digging tunnels, constructing my own bridges out of sticks and bark, the hours spent still resonate deep in my heart with pure glee. To this day, the last wooden hand-crafted vintage car I received sits in pride of place on top of my bookcase for all to see.

The puzzle mode is the meat and potatoes of this product. Appearing as a vehicle on a small world map for that level, you can drive freely around exploring, but your main goal is approaching the statues that allow you to enter that stage. You can tackle any stage you want in any order. There is no preview of the puzzle, so the only way to see it is to load into it. This can get mildly frustrating as the load times are lengthier than what I expected. All the puzzles follow the same rule; get the entering traffic to the exit as efficiently as possible. The more efficient you are in getting the vehicles to the exit, the more stars you will earn on that stage.

The difficulty of the challenge lies in the environment, the number of entries and exits, and your budget. Once you have completed your build, you commence the simulation and watch the vehicles move about your creation. Once the simulation is complete you are given the results and put back out on to the world map.

This adds to the loading frustration – if you wanted to redo the challenge or adjust your work to potentially earn more stars, you have to start over. Once you earn enough stars, you can move on to the next level with more stages and ever-increasing challenges.

The music in the game is highly calming, resulting in a Zen-like experience as you chill out and play the game. Though repetitive, it is not so intrusive that it breaks the calming vibe. All the other sounds, except one, further enhance the relaxing nature of this game. That one sound in question is the car horn that blasts while you’re on the world map blocking traffic.

Road Builder easily lends itself the privilege of a game you can pick up and put down whenever you want, giving yourself some time to unwind, relax, or while away the hours. Now, as I act like a grumpy old man sitting inside on a comfy chair, muttering under my breath how easily today’s youth has it, or on a stump outside, puffing on a pipe telling you kids to keep off my lawn, I’ll have my Switch will be in hand, and I’ll be reliving my childhood, proving that I know better than the government, and shouting at those that will or won’t listen, “It’s all a conspiracy to get us to listen to more ads and buy more junk we don’t need.”

Written by: Ashley Barnett-Cosgrove