Initially released on Steam in January 2018, Trailmakers is a game where you’re tasked with building vehicles and using them to explore an open-world. The game is quite beloved by thousands on Steam, with many praising it for the robust vehicle development system. Six long years later, developer Flashbulb Games has released a massive 2.0 update titled Pioneers. This update brings a campaign mode into the game, alongside physics-driven construction, survival mode, an expanded map, and many more upgrades to available building blocks and UI. Overall, it’s a massive update for the game, but how does this new content fare?
If you’ve never entered the world of Trailmakers before, let me be your guide to this exploration vehicle builder. You will need to craft vehicles to survive hostile creatures and mine resources to keep on building, which is interesting in its own way. However, can it stand up among other titans and not only capture but keep your attention?
It’s Not Easy Being Green
You are a rookie Trailmaker tasked with the delivery of a package to a newly settled planet. This should be an easy mission – get in, get out. Of course, things can’t be that easy. The planet is under attack, leaving you stranded with no way to contact HQ. Now you and the locals named Kermits, I mean, Froggits must work together to fend off the invading force and get you back home.
The opening and setting of the new content in Trailmakers: Pioneers is attention-grabbing. You are already under attack and must learn everything you can to survive. So, it’s unfortunate that the campaign quickly devolves into fetch quests. Even the quests that involve combat will also require you to get something for some of the villages. Normally, I wouldn’t mind doing some fetch quests. I’m a lover of RPGs after all. However, there is something that gets tedious and formulaic about Trailmakers. Each new settlement was a single quest that involved getting supplies or people. I could optionally do more quests in that settlement, but I didn’t care.
That’s the worst part of Pioneers‘ campaign. I had a hard time caring about any of the Froggits that I encountered. They existed, merely there for me to accept a quest, then never see again. I wanted more from this campaign, especially as a key feature of Trailmakers: Pioneers. This story unironically feels like a tutorial for the main aspect of the game, vehicle building.
Building the World
Overall, you will spend a large portion of Trailmakers inside the builder. This system allows you to create any vehicle. This could be a plane, boat, car, or even a tank. The limits are literally your imagination, level, and available building blocks. The system works like building with Legos. Each block has a connector space that will allow more blocks to attach to them. The game highlights each connector that is available to you. I really appreciated this as I am not the strongest builder, admittedly.
There is a small ramp in the builder with a sample vehicle you will need to fix. Allowing you to learn how to build before asking for a huge machine. There are even four active slots allowing you to switch vehicles on the fly. So, this allows you to play with the builder while still having a working vehicle to go back to. You can even save previous works as a blueprint. The system is honestly quite robust, showing off how much Flashbulb Games cared about it. The system is fun and I spent most of my time in the game seeing what I could build. I would only stop when I was forced to for story or to gather resources.
Blocks are not free in this system. You will start with a limited number of them and will need to craft more. Each block will require a small variety of materials ranging from aluminum to rubber. These materials grow around the map from either trees or giant rocks. You can use the miner tool that is given to you to mine them. They even respawn upon visiting a settlement after a small period, so resources are not limited on the map. The best part is that if you use a resource for a block for a vehicle, it will be available for the next. I never found myself needing to craft more wheels for another vehicle.
The wheels from my last vehicle would be there waiting to use. This made crafting really painless as I didn’t need to worry about my resources to rebuild my machine, especially as you have limits on how much power you can supply to it. Each gadget has a strict requirement on power. For example, a shotgun costs one power and a motor costs two. If I have only two power slots, I will not be able to have a gun and a motor. So, I could craft one car that I used to move, and then when I got into combat. I would simply switch to my immovable tank.
There is actually a lot of versatility to this that is fun to play with. I find myself even now thinking if a tower would be feasible to make. This is the biggest strength of Trailmakers as a whole. The sandbox and creativity that allows for big bombastic builds. You can even download and explore hundreds of thousands of creations from other players on the Steam Workshop, which is really neat and creates a community. Pioneers does plenty to build on this here, with more options than ever before at your disposal.
You’re Going for a Ride
Despite the creativity, it’s a shame that the actual driving and combat of the game feels stilted. It’s not outright bad but nothing it does feels new or exciting. In other games I have played, I’ve found the driving to be much more satisfying, which is a shame. The driving and combat of Trailmakers: Pioneers became something to test out vehicles and not something I ever looked forward to. My main gripe is that without another block obtained through level up, later guns face forward. This leads to most fights devolving into me running around my enemies taking potshots as they whittle my vehicle down to nothing. This can be frustrating and even with rotating guns, I found myself not using it.
Combat basically revolves around the vehicle. Any bullet that hits the person inside of the vehicle is instant death. Once a vehicle hits a certain amount of damage, you will need to repair it. Repairing will cost a repair token, which you can store three at a time. Visiting a settlement, killing bots, or finding a fuel canister will revive them. However, if you exit your vehicle you can repair it for free. The downside to this is that you will be killed instantly if hit and it takes much longer to finish the repair. The idea is that you exit the vehicle when not in danger and use the token in a fight.
Honestly, you don’t need to worry about death. Even during a boss fight, death was a very minor inconvenience as the boss’s health stayed the same. Fights with minor enemies upon death do not heal back up. They will just be there waiting for you to return. This makes the game not as stressful, but I found it less satisfying. There needs to be some consequences to our actions, otherwise why do we play?
What Did it Cost
Trailmakers is an interesting concept for a game. On paper, a vehicle exploration game sounds like a blast. In practice, however, I found myself wanting to play different games. There just was not enough in the new update to keep me engaged beyond customizing and building different vehicles.
Speaking of, the vehicle building is great. In fact, I lost at least ten hours of my twenty hours of playtime to just building. It’s everything around it that feels lacking. Vehicle combat is slow and lacks any sort of consequences. The story is tedious and repetitive, leaving me wanting much more. Overall, the game feels like a vehicle builder with story and combat slapped on. There are many games out there vying for your attention. Trailmakers has a spark that seems interesting at first. However, after spending enough time with it, I feel you have to love vehicle creation to a point that I’m not able to.
This game will be fantastic for those who love to build in a sandbox. There is a wonderful and in-depth vehicle building system that anyone can have a blast with. However, there isn’t much here that will keep your attention, even with all the new offerings of Trailmakers: Pioneers. For fans of the game, I think you will really enjoy the offerings Flashbulb Games has created here, but I worry that it won’t be enough for newcomers to truly become invested. In the end, Trailmakers, while fun, was unable to keep my attention longer than it took for me to build my machines.
Disclaimer: Flashbulb Games provided Final Weapon with a Steam copy of Trailmakers for review purposes.
