RoadCraft News

[h3]April Highlights, Runners! 🚚[/h3]

April was packed with milestones! Between SnowRunner’s Season 15 and the countdown to RoadCraft’s release, we have been quite busy!

A big news to kick things off: RoadCraft is officialy GOLD! ✨



And now, let’s take a look at everything that made this month one to remember! 👇

[h2]🎂 SnowRunner celebrates 5 years on the road![/h2]

Happy birthday to SnowRunner! It has been five full years of muddy trails, steep climbs and wild recoveries.

A massive thank you to everyone who’s stuck with us and helped build this amazing community. ❤️



[h3]Still going strong with Season 15[/h3]

Season 15: Oil and Dirt dropped a few weeks ago, and you’ve been tackling Quebec’s wild terrain like pros. 😏

We’ve loved seeing what you’ve accomplished so far. We’re featuring some of your best screenshots in this update!


📸 zeang2, blueaxolotl. .zarath. and on Discord

Don’t forget: this is the second-to-last season of Year 4, and next season promises to be exciting… 👀


[h2]🧭 Expeditions updates[/h2]

[h3]Season 3 is on the horizon![/h3]

We’re heading back to the Carpathian Mountains in the upcoming season! 🏔️
Season 3 will bring:

- 3 new trucks to master
- 2 new specialists to join your crew
- 1 new map & 1 cave.
- And a bunch of free new content to expand your expeditions

More details coming soon!

[h3]Easter Event Wrap-up[/h3]

Our Easter event ended yesterday and brought two unique skins you could unlock, and we saw tons of you jumping in for the fun! We’re dropping a screenshot here to show off one of the seasonal looks. Thanks to everyone who joined!


[h2]🚧 RoadCraft: The countdown is on![/h2]

Just under a month to go before RoadCraft launches on May 20! 👷‍♀️

We’re all very excited and we hope you’re planning to bring friends along for the ride...
As you may have seen it yesterday, we revealed our co-op trailer showing off how you can build and have fun with your crew. RoadCraft is all about creativity together.

🎥 Check trailer here!

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/2104890/view/521963588563239132


[h3]RoadCraft Devblog: Build the engine![/h3]

We recently published a devblog where devs dive into the creation of RoadCraft engine and the technical challenges they tackled to bring this game to life.

If you're curious about how the game works behind the scenes, it’s a must-read and it’s here: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/2104890/view/521963588563239043

[h3]Check our Focus Community Youtube channel![/h3]

We’ve been posting a lot of RoadCraft content on this channel lately and now that the game is officialy gold, it’s the perfect time to check out our 10-minutes raw gameplay video!

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

There are also plenty of short videos available, covering everything from road crafting and physics in action to vehicle highlights and more here!

[h2]Join us on social media! 📨[/h2]

[h3]Hang out, win stuff, and connect with the community![/h3]

Our Discord server just got a fresh new look! If you haven’t checked it out in a while, now’s the perfect time. It’s the hub for all things truck simulation, where you’ll find passionate players from SnowRunner, RoadCraft and Expeditions.

We’ve also recently launched exclusive giveaways!

Our discord is the perfect place to:

- Team up with other players
- Chat directly with the team
- Stay updated on your favorite games

👉 Join the SnowRunner - RoadCraft - Expeditions Discord

And of course, don’t forget to follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram for all the latest news.

That’s all for this month! Thanks for being part of the journey and see you in May 😉

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2104890/RoadCraft/

🚨 HONK HONK HONK

That’s not traffic, it’s your friends calling you to jump into the RoadCraft co-op mode!

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
Today’s brand-new trailer puts the spotlight on the multiplayer experience that turns every rebuild into a wild group adventure.

Whether you're digging through debris or laying fresh asphalt, it’s always better with a buddy (or three).



🔧 Up to 4 players
🌍 Cross-play ready
🚧 Drop-in / drop-out
🛠️ Shared progression
🎙️ Built-in voice chat

Team up, split the workload, save your stuck friends from muddy disasters, and unleash your chaotic creativity together. RoadCraft is serious simulation but also pure sandbox fun for you and your teammates!

RoadCraft launches May 20 on PS5, Xbox Series X|S & PC. Pre-order now & reshape the aftermath together!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2104890/RoadCraft/

[h3]Hey everyone, and welcome to this RoadCraft devblog![/h3]

Today, we’re diving into the origins of the custom Swarm engine (World War Z, Space Marine 2) built specifically for RoadCraft.
But what’s the Swarm Engine? It’s a tool that makes crowds and traffic behave more naturally and react just like in real life.
You’ll discover how it came to life, what features made the cut, which ones didn’t (and why), and even get a glimpse at some future-facing tech that might shape the games to come. 😉

[h2]☀️ RoadCraft’s Birth[/h2]

The idea for RoadCraft started to take shape about a year after SnowRunner launched. At first, it was just a simple pitch:
What if we built a Swarm engine demo that could pull off terrain deformation like the one we have in SnowRunner?
Back then, the big question on the tech side was how to bring SnowRunner features into the latest version of the Swarm engine, mainly because keeping two engines alive at the same time just wasn’t realistic.
And yeah, trying to move stuff over from one engine to another came with a lot of headaches.🤯
Once we realized we couldn’t just keep supporting the older engine while building new features, the real challenge became figuring out:
- What features do we bring over first?
- In what order?
- And what will they actually look like in the new Swarm tech?

[h2]💪 Rolling up our sleeves[/h2]

Building RoadCraft meant getting our hands dirty, for real. 😅
We had to rethink everything from terrain technology to lighting. While we brought over some tech from our previous projects, adapting it to a new environment turned out to be way more work than expected.
One big challenge was letting several team members work on the same terrain without stepping on each other’s toes.
In past Swarm projects, we mostly used geometry instead of full-on terrain tech, so this was new ground for us.

Then came the RoadCraft gameplay features: pouring sand, laying asphalt, tearing down trees… At first, they were basic, just proof-of-concept. But as they evolved, they started affecting terrain deformation in unexpected (and often chaotic) ways. We spent months just making sure the terrain wouldn’t implode every time a player messed with sand or trees.
At one point, we even thought about cutting asphalt laying altogether to keep the project scope realistic. But in the end, we pushed through and we’re glad we did.😊

Speaking of which, vehicle damage is something we couldn’t include in RoadCraft for now but we’ll come back to that topic in a future devblog!

Here’s how the terrain looked during the project’s first prototypes.

The terrain from our very first prototype level, featuring the early version of the factory. This is where we first tested the tech that allowed multiple people to work on different parts of the same level simultaneously. Back then, these sections called “terrain blocks” in the engine were much smaller than they are now.

[h2]🚧 Sand, forest and asphalt: a love-hate story[/h2]

Adding sand mechanics was a big leap for us. Our terrain system wasn’t originally built to handle such intense modifications but we made it work.
What really caught us off-guard were trees. Yep, trees. 🌳

[h3]- When trees fight back[/h3]
Turns out, when you let players dig the terrain, they can also dig out the ground under trees. And if you do that, those trees should logically fall. Easy in theory but tricky in practice.
And all that forest is only physicalized to some extent. We can not just make all the trees around you “truly” physical
So we had to get smart: trees only become physical when it matters, when you're nearby, when an AI’s interacting with them or when there’s an actual collision.
This led to a lot of bugs (some of which we’re still fixing) but it also made for some great moments.
Most trees can be taken down, cut, bulldozed or flattened with a heavy enough vehicle. A few trees are indestructible by design, thanks to the level design team.
There has to be some challenge left, right?

One of our first attempts at creating a “dense” forest in the game level, once we had enough nature assets to make it happen. And yes, that’s the Snowrunner Tayga with the dozer blade. No, it’s not in the game but who knows, maybe it will be in the future. (Though if it does, we’ll need to rebuild it from scratch since this version was just for prototyping).

[h3]- Sand challenge[/h3]
Sand came with its own set of issues. In early tests, players could stack up massive piles of it, which quickly caused memory problems. So we added limits on how much sand you can pile up in one spot and how deep you can dig.

There’s a reason we don’t have excavators in the game: supporting deep, fully physical terrain would come at too high a cost. So the system focuses only on the area directly around the player, which is where all the cool interactions happen anyway.

[h3]- Asphalt meltdown[/h3]
Asphalt was by far the biggest technical challenge.

Our engine didn’t like having more than two terrain materials in the same area. Three caused issues. Four looked ugly and moreover, was causing rendering chaos.

We were stuck between cutting features or rewriting core systems. And since road building is central to RoadCraft, asphalt had to stay. That meant saying goodbye to the gravel layer, even though it would’ve made things more realistic. Maybe we’ll find a way to bring it back in a future update or even a sequel.

When the terrain really hates you all the way 😅. Early prototypes of terrain-vehicle interactions were brutal.

Somewhere along the way, terrain material problems were an everyday pain in all the places. And what’s that in the bottom left corner…

The “physics world” looks different… (a peak at how Havok debugger looks like)

[h2]👀 Besides the core! [/h2]

One of the biggest challenges outside of gameplay was save file size. Every time you cut a tree, pour sand, lay asphalt or simply drive around and deform the terrain, the save file gets bigger. And at one point, we were seriously wondering if we could even fit it in console memory.
Optimizing this beast was a process half a year and half our collective nervous system out the window. It’s still a heavy file, but it’s manageable now.
That said, if you’re planning to create an asphalted parking lot of all the maps in the game, your hard drive will be grateful to you. 😂

[h3]This devblog has come to an end! [/h3]
As with anything in life, the development of a completely new title on new technology is a massive undertaking: one that demands careful planning, difficult choices, and constant efforts to avoid burning out the team or pushing the project over budget.
There’s still a lot more we’d like to share, and we’ll dive deeper into other aspects of RoadCraft in upcoming devblogs.
Thanks for reading and be prepared for May 20! 😉

— Vitaliy Y. - Game Director

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2104890/RoadCraft/

[h2]Which one will you choose? 🚛[/h2]

Whether you're passionate about exploration, delivering goods through difficult terrains, or rebuilding after natural disasters, our off-road games offer unique experiences for every simulation enthusiast.

Here's a detailed look at what each title offers:



https://store.steampowered.com/app/1465360/SnowRunner/

Face extreme environments with cutting-edge terrain physics in SnowRunner! Take the wheel of over 100 vehicles from brands like Ford, Chevrolet, and Freightliner as you battle mud, torrential waters, snow, and frozen lakes. Expand your adventure even further with community-created mods.

- Highly advanced terrain physics
- 100+ vehicles to unlock, upgrade & customize
- Crossplay multiplayer (PC, Xbox, PlayStation)
- Multiplayer co-op (up to 4 players)
- Huge interconnected world to explore across more than 15 regions
- Mod support across platforms



https://store.steampowered.com/app/2477340/Expeditions_A_MudRunner_Game/

Embark on rewarding scientific expeditions in uncharted lands. Navigate arid deserts, dense forests, steep mountains and even caves, using advanced tools to overcome obstacles.

Manage your research camp, recruit experts, and equip your vehicles with high-tech gadgets like drones and metal detectors to uncover hidden treasures and forgotten ruins.

- Off-road physics-driven exploration across 6 regions
- High-tech tools: reconnaissance drones, metal detectors, echo sounders
- Research base management & expert recruitment
- Multiplayer co-op (up to 4 players)
- Mod support



https://store.steampowered.com/app/2104890/RoadCraft/

Step into the role of a disaster recovery company and restore regions devastated by natural disasters. Clear debris, repair infrastructure, and guide your transport convoys through challenging terrain.

RoadCraft lets you construct roads, bridges and more with a sandbox approach that allows you to strategize and choose your own methods to rebuild infrastructure.

- Advanced physics-based reconstruction gameplay
- 40+ vehicles: bulldozers, cranes, transport trucks & more
- Large-scale rebuilding missions across 8 maps
- Multiplayer co-op (up to 4 players)
- Mod support

Each game offers a distinct experience, catering to different aspects of off-road gameplay and simulation.

Whether you're an explorer, a delivery driver, or a builder, there's an adventure for everyone – and you might find yourself enjoying one, two, or even all three, depending on your playstyle.

Which one did you already try? Let us know!
[h3]Happy trucking! 🚚💨[/h3]