Is Trailmakers Good?
Trailmakers isn’t for everyone, hell, no game is made for everyone anymore. It leans itself towards child gamers, though I have admittedly had a puzzling and relaxing time with it. For the dedicated builder, the developers host weekly build competitions geared towards advanced building techniques. Trailmakers, seemingly inspired by Lego, puts you in the space boots of a cute little spaceperson who crashed landed a trash freighter on a deserted planet. You collect the trash, with each piece you turn in, you’ll unlock new pieces that you can use to custom build all manner of vehicles. Your custom-built vehicles will allow you to dive, drive, and jet around the sandbox map collecting more pieces allowing you to build more and more advanced vehicles.
What does Trailmakers do right?
Trailmakers has more than wheels. Trailmakers builds stop with your own imagination. I’m a simp so I build cars, boats, and gliders, but I have seen walking mech scorpions, t-rexes, hovercrafts, and working construction machinery complete with pistons. The directional buttons on the D-Pad quickly changes your saved custom craft between up to 4 presets. You can speed off a mountain and turn into a glider with a quick “up on the D-Pad”. Just before you crash into the sea, press “down on the D-Pad” to turn into a boat and zip away unscathed. When you crash, your craft explodes into plastic bricks, much like smashing Lego. Then, with the press of a button respawn, easily edit your craft, and try once more.
What does Trailmakers do wrong?
In Trailmakers it’s very easy to find yourself on the wrong side of the map. If you don’t pick up most of the vehicle parts near you, you’ll end up too far away, having an impossible time navigating the terrain, unable to pick up or return vehicle parts. The sound catalogue is lacking, often blaring one engine noise instead of hearing the gears shift up, and having limited flora-fauna sound effects. Finally, Trailmakers music is a lackluster melancholy piano. At first, it’s nice -possibly even relaxing- but after a few hours you already know what time it is- Spotify App. Get your own custom music going, maybe even a book on tape, or a podcast. For me, it’s Funk, like Lettuce or Five Alarm Funk.
Should you buy it?
Maybe. It’s free on GamePass, complete with a competitive online multiplayer. I recommend this game to anyone interested in Lego and Building. Trailmakers is an open world sandbox puzzle vehicle game, unlike anything I have ever seen and puts most other builder games to shame. Trailmakers is an easily playable free entry to builder games and you couldn’t ask for a better example. No mental health concerns, kid-friendly.
Catch me streaming most nights on Twitch at 8:30 til midnight central time zone and follow me on Twitter for comedy.
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