Mini Motorways

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Draw the roads for a growing city, and get one scored try a day at the same map and modifiers as everyone else.

on dinopoloclub.com

Mini Motorways gameplay: a dark city map with coloured houses and destinations linked by grey roads, a roundabout and a highlighted motorway crossing a river

Mini Motorways is a road-drawing strategy game from Dinosaur Polo Club, the makers of Mini Metro: you connect houses to busy destinations as a city grows, until traffic grinds to a halt. The Daily Challenge picks a map and modifiers for everyone, gives you one scored attempt, and ranks your trips on a global leaderboard.

About Mini Motorways

Mini Motorways is made by Dinosaur Polo Club, the studio behind Mini Metro. It came out on Steam in July 2021 and is also on Nintendo Switch and on Apple Arcade. Each game starts with a few coloured houses and destinations on a map based on a real city. You draw roads so cars can get from houses to destinations of the same colour, and each completed trip adds to your score. New buildings keep appearing, and every week of game time you pick an upgrade such as a motorway, a bridge, a roundabout or traffic lights. The game ends when a destination has waited too long for cars.

The Daily Challenge sits in the main menu from the start, alongside the first maps. Every day it picks one of the game's cities at random and adds a random set of modifiers, such as Rush Hour, where every destination is much busier, or Lights Out, where no traffic lights are offered. Because the map is random, the daily can drop you into a city you have not yet unlocked in normal play.

You can only post one score a day: Dinosaur Polo Club's support page notes that only your first attempt on a daily challenge logs a score on the leaderboard, and you cannot go back to earlier days. That makes it a one-shot run, unlike the Weekly Challenge, which you can retry as often as you like during the week. Scores only sync if you are online when you finish, and on Apple Arcade you also need to be signed in to Game Center.

The daily suits people who like short, calm planning games but want a little pressure: one map, one try, and a number to compare.

How to play Mini Motorways

Open Mini Motorways while online and choose the Daily Challenge card in the menu.
Read the day's map and modifiers before you place the first road; this is your only scored attempt.
Drag to draw roads from houses to the destinations of the same colour. Each car that completes a trip adds to your score.
At the end of each week of game time, choose one of the offered upgrades and place it where traffic builds up.
Keep redrawing roads as the city grows. When a destination waits too long, the run ends and your trips are posted to the leaderboard.

Screenshots

Mini Motorways key art from its Steam page

Mini Motorways: a pale Los Angeles map with coloured houses and destinations joined by roads and a yellow motorway across the river

Mini Motorways: an orange city map split by the river Isar, with dark roads, roundabouts and an orange motorway

Tips

Do not use the daily to warm up: only the first attempt is scored, even if you restart.
If you want practice with the same kind of rules, the Weekly Challenge allows as many retries as you like.
Leave space around destinations early; new houses and buildings fill gaps quickly.
Check whether the modifiers take away an upgrade, such as traffic lights or motorways, and plan routes that do not depend on it.
Stay online and, on Apple Arcade, signed in to Game Center so the score reaches the leaderboard.