Highways & Co. revealed

I’m not saying publishers and developers should do away with press releases, but something caught my eye yesterday, and it doesn’t have one. Mostly because I am a sucker for a few things, including city builders, games that are weirdly original, and most importantly for today, traffic management. Revealed last week, but only really caught by YouTube’s Algorithm™ in the last day or two, solo developer iamsahaj revealed Highways & Co., a puzzle city-building traffic management game with a few interesting ideas.

“Ever played Cities: Skylines and wished you could spend less time building a city and more time figuring out how to make its roads actually work? Highways & Co. is a traffic simulator game about designing road networks, solving traffic problems, and finding out whether your solution holds up under pressure. Build the road. Open it to traffic. Find the problem. Fix it. Repeat,” notes the Steam and YouTube trailer description.

The website/landing page for basically everything to do with Highways & Co., notes: “Build the road you want – Create smooth highway ramps and functional slip roads. Build an expensive bridge over the railway, or settle for a level crossing. Build roundabouts or traffic lights, manage lane connections and priority. There is rarely just one way to solve a problem.

Then see if it works – Every vehicle has a route, and its own driving behavior. Traffic merges, changes lanes, queues, and reacts to the network you’ve built. When something goes wrong, figure out why.”

Of course, Highways & Co. was just revealed, so don’t expect a release date, but I did trawl the comments of the trailer for details and questions that are commonly asked and answered. Don’t take these as 100% confirmation, but there will be Mac support and the price is expected to be about “$10-15,” with a release “before the end of the year.” On the gameplay being puzzle-focused, the developer relates it to Poly Bridge in terms of challenges to complete. Workshop support is part of the plans. Most importantly, there is a demo expected within the next 30 days. For now, wishlist Highways & Co. on Steam.