Mini Motorways Review (The Architect)
A game with a simple premise. Make use of your ever dwindling resources to construct a motorway system that can transport the ever increasing traffic that inhabits the miniature island. What a grand concept that is easily understood, no? You think so, don’t you. You know nothing.
The true motive is to lull you into a false feeling of safety, security and control. Once you are hooked, you are now a slave to the game and it’s machinations. You cannot stop. You will never quit. You will become like the cars that inhabit the world you helped create. Stasis. Agony. Despair. Unending anguish. Your spirit will have been crushed under the tire of capitalism, and it’s ever churning, unrelenting wheels. There will have been no point to your struggle. You will have wasted precious hours, days or hell, even months trying to achieve a mere fraction of the goal you had set. This, my friend, is the meaning of life.
What are these miniature automobiles? Such a frivolous creation, serving no more than a cosmetic purpose. We are witnessing the decay of society as the populace slowly succumbs to the trappings of capitalistic greed. While their pockets overflow with currency they can scarcely find a way to spend, they instead take to the construction of miniature highways that exist for naught but their twisted pleasure. Truly, a disgusting display of conspicuous consumption, that would have the late Karl Marx turning in his proverbial grave.
The urban hellscape is not as terrifying as some may think. Yes, it is rather daunting, especially when the driver is faced with the conundrum of either taking an alleyway to save time, only to get stuck in a dead-end with no escape, a fate worse than a lifetime of being an office worker. Though this could be avoided, if more people were willing to listen to the voices of the schizophrenic, instead of dismissing them as lunatics, due to the fact they are not willing to adhere to the oppressive systems that are currently in place.
You have been tasked with solving a seemingly impossible dilemma that only the mentally unstable can achieve. For you must figure out the optimal method of getting all these automobiles to their destination without causing widespread pandemonium. Yes, this is a herculean task, which can lead, and often does, to the onset of mania, followed by a bout of depression, but this is where the fun begins. For it is only when you are pushed to the absolute brink of (in)sanity, that your greatest potential is realized and your greatest creations become a reality. Why continue the facade of a well adjusted being, when the voices within your head, offer a far more tantalising proposition. Join us, they whisper, and you will be freed from the shackles of a mundane and boring office life, and with it all your problems disappear. No longer will you be confined to your prison cell, you will instead live within a reality of your own making. The walls of your home will be demolished and the only remaining structure will be your imagination. Only then will you truly be freed from the oppressive social conventions and archaic societal norms that once held you hostage.
With each passing traffic jam, you are further pushed into the depths of madness. The traffic is a symptom of a much broader issue. the roads in the cities of the Mini Motorways realm of existence are far too narrow to accommodate the sheer volume of drivers on the road. Not to mention the fact that it's extremely difficult to maneuver with the amount of vehicles present, especially when trying to shift lanes. An individual will find that what he or she is creating is no mere road but a highway to purgatory. A road paved, not with materials such as rock or brick, but paved with the tears of men and the souls of the lost.
A road that leads only to one place, the fiery den where the damned reside in perpetuity.