As a kid who grew up with Legos, back before they required a small loan to afford, I’ve always enjoyed building. I came across Trailmakers on a YouTube channel at complete random. The Lego-like nature appealed to me. It also had a bit of a Banjo-Kazooie Nuts & Bolts vibe, which I know isn’t the most popular game, but I always thought the car building mechanic seemed cool. With the Steam Summer sale still on, I was able to get it for a decent price.

The first thing you’ll notice about this game is the world design. Again, you can really tell Legos or Megablocks were a real inspiration here. Your player character looks like a legally distinct minifigure and the building blocks are very Lego like in nature. You can customize your character with some fun hats and costumes, though a lot are locked behind cheap, but still aggravating, DLC pack. Everything you build looks very plasticky. Not in a way that makes you feel like your car or truck is cheap looking, but again, like you built a real nice Lego set. There is another paid DLC pack that lets you change the texture of your builds to look wooden or metal or etc. There’s also yet another DLC pack of decal stickers, like the classic WWII fighter shark mouth. The map you explore during the campaign leans more towards realism. There’s a blocky volcano, but the islands are more natural in appearance. There’s some grassland areas, a forest, wetlands, and desert, along with a few floating islands. They look like something out of Breath of the Wild, sort of cartoonish realism.

Building is the name of the game here. The system for constructing machines is fun to master. It’s simple enough to not feel overwhelming, but complex enough to be engaging. You have your frame blocks, like the Lego 2x4s or 2x1s, that all snap together in enough ways to be ever useful. There’s tires and engines. These provide different traction and power. You unlock ballast tanks to craft submersibles and wings and props to build aircraft. Everything clicks together as long as it has an open stud to connect to. Placing parts can be a bit tedious at times because they don’t snap to the nearest stud. When I pulled a piece out of my build tray there was no certainty it would be facing the way I need it to, so I’d have to fiddle with the rotation menu to get it in the right spot. I understand why you wouldn’t want parts to auto-snap together like Fallout 4’s settlement building, but for little things like headlights I’d’ve appreciated the convenience. It would also be nice to have the ability to resize some objects. The dilemma of these building games I always find myself in is form vs function. I could let my creativity take over and spend hours crafting a car that looks like a Chevy Belair to drive around, but the utilitarian in me knows a go kart seat with 4 wheels and an engine are enough to get the job done, so why overcomplicate it.

While building, you also have to consider physics. Luckily all of your pieces lock tight together, so you can build a spindly arm off your vehicle that won’t immediately snap off. When building cars, your main concerns are weight, traction, and torque. Boats and subs require you to take buoyancy into account. Finding how to build something that hits the sweet spot of diving and surfacing as you need it to. The biggest challenge is building flying aircraft though. The game gives you an overlay you can turn on that shows you how well your lift, drag, and propulsion are functioning, and gives you pointers for anything that’s out of limits. The controls for all these vehicles can be a little finicky since you’re building them from scratch. The physics are mostly realistic, but I did have occasions where the same drop off a cliff could have two different results or just nudging a tree caused my wheel to violently fly off. It’s a game with so many ways to play that it can’t fine tune them all, “Jack of all trades, master of none.”

There is a campaign mode to this game. I wouldn’t go so far as to call it a story mode. It’s just “you are a space garbage man, your ship crashes, and now you have to collect pieces to build an escape shuttle.” I never really clicked with games like Minecraft that just set you loose with no real goal, so Trailmakers having just that to work towards kept me engaged. There are scrap balls of varying sizes that contain the parts you need. Not every piece of scrap is required for the spaceship, and most of the important pieces are easy to find, but have a puzzle element to them, like being in the center of a volcano or at the bottom of the ocean. The map is laid out nicely that you will naturally progress through the different modes of transportation. I did find the game was stingy with frame blocks, which are what make up the meat of your vehicles, and they over did the aerodynamic blocks.

I started out with a little car to collect the easy blocks, then I moved onto a duck car to pass over the water ways. Finally I hit the peak of car building with my swamp truck. I took a cue from Shelby Stenga when building that truck. I could travel across land and see with relative ease and pick up most blocks. I did later build a wide, heavy towing tug to maneuver the largest scrap balls. Then it was time to conquer the deep. I built a small, but powerful sub pretty quick that took care of most underwater jobs. The last thing to conquer was the sky. It took awhile and the game did start to drag a bit as I spent more time collecting not so unique building blocks vs new engines or wheels or gadgets. I felt like the Wright Brothers, trying to work out the mystery of flight. My early attempts were a little rocket jumper that couldn’t stay airborne and a Great Value version of a Chinook. Finally after finding more airplane parts, I managed to put together a close approximation of a Cessna. There was still some tweaking before it was capable of controlled flight, but once I got into the air and was flying around I had a real sense of achievement. Helicopters alluded me for a little longer and I did have to consult a guide on how best to build one. My last big build was my MASH style copter before I finally collected all the spaceship parts. There were some hover pads that I tried once, but never got the hang of. There were certain puzzles where building a crane seemed like a viable solution, but the game really doesn’t like when you stack a bunch of pistons together. I tried building both a tower crane and a smaller mobile one, but the game lost it’s mind and they constantly wobbled & exploded.

All in all, this game was a blast. I’ve tried a few other building games like this. Besieged was a simpler concept with bite size levels and Main Assembly was much more complex, almost geared towards someone who tinkers and engineers in real life. Trailmaker was the perfect middle ground. It’s easy to learn and most of the programming of parts is easy to do. You can get wild with your creations, as you’ll see on the main menu, but it never felt unapproachably difficult. If you enjoy Legos and building machines to solve puzzles I can heartily recommend Trailmakers.