When we last covered Trailmakers here on Marooners’ Rock, it was for the game’s initial rollout on Steam Early Access. With its subsequent inclusion in the Indie Megabooth’s 100 games at PAX East, I was able to get some hands-on time with the game and chat for a few minutes with a couple of the developers from Flashbulb Games.
The PAX build that I played was essentially the current build on Steam as of early April, and showed off Trailmakers‘ main Exploration mode. In this mode, players confront a massive open world with all sorts of challenges, while simultaneously going through a fairly unobtrusive tutorial to learn how to build and upgrade basic vehicles. One of the most fun things with Trailmakers is that even very early on in the game there are already multiple ways to solve certain navigation problems. Just because a certain hill is insurmountable without an upgraded engine, doesn’t mean there isn’t another way around.
Building, of course, is a critical part of a game like this, and Trailmakers doesn’t disappoint here. I found snapping components together to be a remarkably simple experience, particularly as compared to some other games which feature vehicle building as a major game component and are in roughly similar phases of development. In this area, the past experiences of Flashbulb Games’ veteran developers definitely shows through!
One issue that I found with the current Early Access build was vehicle controls. The PAX East build only had keyboard and mouse available for controls, which while excellent for building, were somewhat less optimal for controlling vehicles, particularly air vehicles. However, a week after PAX East, the Flashbulb Games team released what they called “The Quality Update” or Trailmakers v0.5, which addressed that specific problem by enabling gamepad controls. In my post-PAX East playing, I’ve found that keyboard and mouse for building plus a good gamepad for vehicle controls, is a fantastic control scheme, and works absolutely seamlessly.
From talking to the developers at PAX East, I was also able to confirm that Trailmakers is essentially the “spiritual successor” to the cancelled Project: Karoo. Considering that I voted for Karoo back in 2015, it’s nice to know that the concept has been reborn in the core gameplay of Trailmakers.
Flying isn’t easy. It’s a lot easier with a gamepad.
The roadmap for Trailmakers has it coming out of Steam Early Access sometime later in 2018. In its current form, the game already has a lot to offer, including an Exploration mode with a full campaign for players to experience, a Sandbox Mode for building whatever creations players can imagine, and a Racing mode for competitive challenges. Steam Workshop, and Steam Leaderboards are already built in as well. The game is receiving regular updates from its developer, and with Flashbulb Games’ core of veteran developers, there’s little doubt in this writer’s mind that they’ll cross the finish line with a solid, well built game.
Trailmakers features a Day/Night cycle.
Players interested in learning more about Trailmakers should check out the Trailmakers Steam page, or join the game’s Discord channel. I personally enjoyed the game enough to nominate it for Marooners’ Rock’s Best Indie Games of Pax East 2018. Xbox One gamers aren’t going to be left out either, as Trailmakers is planned for a release on that platform later in the year as well.
