Road Maintenance Simulator Review

Another seemingly everyday job has been turned into a simulator. Sure we’ve seen some great ones such as PowerWash Simulator and House Flipper, but can we expect to find any enjoyment in a game where you perform tasks such as straightening bollards? Let's find out by reviewing Road Maintenance Simulator!

Right out of the gate I had no idea where or who I was, which granted isn’t particularly important in a simulator game, but it’s always nice to have at least a bit of context. Instead, a small selection of missions are presented to you, with more becoming available as the current ones are completed. That’s basically it for the entire duration of the game, as there are no side missions or reasons to explore the world. There is also no tutorial or button layout in the options menu, which means figuring everything out by yourself, but the controls are fairly basic so it shouldn’t take long to discover which button does what.

Road Maintenance Simulator won’t be winning any awards for its visuals, but the designs of the vehicles you can drive aren’t actually too bad. Their interiors all look realistic, making me prefer the first-person camera when driving (that, and the not-so-great third-person camera), and the exteriors all look like they’ve come straight out of a car wash. The rest of the game didn’t get the same treatment unfortunately; the generic country lanes all looked identical and pedestrian cars were quite rudimentary.

The mission variety available in Road Maintenance Simulator was okay at best, with some often repeating but in different locations. Each one feels like a checklist of tasks that must be completed in a precise order, so don’t you dare place a warning sign down without putting up traffic lights first! Although the game won’t actually allow you to try and do anything out of order anyway. Each mission has a specific vehicle needed to complete them, and with a reasonable number of them available, all with fairly decent handling — aside from the occasional wonky physics — it makes certain missions such as cutting down overhanging trees or cleaning guardrails quite relaxing and simple enough to complete.

However, almost all of these missions have an incredibly tedious and time consuming set-up in which you must load up your vehicle with traffic lights and warning signs, drive to the destination, and place them all in predetermined locations. The walking animation is painfully slow when you carry one of these items, and placing up to three at a time in the wheelbarrow barely speeds up the process. I get that road workers are probably paid by the hour, and want to take their time for maximum profit, but I didn’t want the game to be that realistic!

Now let’s talk about Road Maintenance Simulator’s biggest downfalls: its bugs. Almost every mission I played I had to force a restart (taking me right back to the start of said task) because of an outright broken portion of the game. One example was when loading up my vehicle after completing a job, one of the traffic signs was unable to be interacted with. I’d gone through this slow, laborious process of fixing a broken railing, and I had to quit to the main menu and restart the mission because I suddenly couldn’t pick up a sign. This happened constantly, with other bugs such as your vehicle not resetting on occasion after flipping it; so after the fourth or fifth time, I was done. I’d seen everything there was to see and couldn’t bring myself to carry on due to the fear of dying of boredom.

As I was playing the PlayStation 5 version, it’s worth noting that none of the trophies popped when they were supposed to during my playthrough; Instead, I got a heap of the digital trinkets as I booted up the game again. I've experienced trophies not syncing to my account before when reviewing an unreleased game, but never for an already released one. In fact as of writing, I still have no trophy list!

Having zero sense of progression and nothing to work towards is the final nail in the coffin for Road Maintenance Simulator. Other simulator games have you learning new abilities or unlocking new content, but this title gives you everything from the get-go, and everything here is not worth the price. Coupled with repetitive missions and far too many glitches, this is honestly an experience I simply can’t recommend.