Have You Played… Freeways?

Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day, perhaps for all time.

Whenever I see a GIF of someone’s twisting roadworks in this traffic-em-up, I think: “Ohhh! Freeways! How could I forget!” And then I forget about it again by the end of the day. On the face of it, this a throwaway puzzler about drawing roads to help traffic flow in the right direction. Glistening and enjoyable for fifteen minutes or a half-hour, and then you saunter on. But underneath that tarmac tinkering is a whole network of freeways that only gets bigger.

I don’t know where this monstrosity of motorways ends. After the first nine levels it zooms out. Then zooms out again when you’re finished the next batch. I’ve heard of people getting to 81 levels, but perhaps there are more? It’s hard to say. After all, the maker of this is Justin Smith, the creator of Desert Golfing’s infinite sands. It is, he says, a simulation for driverless cars. Little toy like robo-vehicles that trundle along your looping lanes. A minimalist Cities: Skylines.