Pure Rock Crawling: where there are no roads

Pure Rock Crawling is an indie project by Polish solo developer Maciej Kuzianik, who has been trying to make the perfect off-road vehicle simulator on rocks for six years. Finally, this game is ready for release.

Pure Rock Crawling is a really small project created by one person, so it’s probably not worth comparing it to the A-games of the MudRunner/SnowRunner series, especially since Maciej Kuzianik’s game doesn’t really involve driving in mud and snow, just trying to climb rocks and squeeze the jeep between huge stones. However, there are not many car simulators that allow us to tame real off-road conditions, so the comparison is inevitable.

Well, the huge advantage of Pure Rock Crawling is that, unlike MudRunner/SnowRunner, it is a Polish game, not a Russian one. For that alone, it’s worth checking out. Besides, the last part of MudRunner, Expeditions: A MudRunner Game, turned out to be very simplistic and pop, and received a lot of negative feedback from players. As of now, the Steam rating of the game from Russian Saber Interactive is only 54/100. Pure Rock Crawling’s drawbacks include the lack of a campaign, quests, and tiny maps, as well as the already mentioned lack of mud, rivers, and snow.

This game has only four small maps with 40 tracks. Your task is to follow a complex route over stones and rocks without touching the cones or poles that mark the tracks. The number of mistakes you make determines the reward at the end, i.e. the money you can spend on car customization. That’s basically it. But to drive all the tracks perfectly, you will need several hours and hundreds of attempts, using different tires, different cars, locking the differential, trying to drive the tracks from different sides, etc.

In Pure Rock Crawling, each wheel and each axle is calculated separately, taking into account tire deformation and size, center of mass displacement, differential lock, etc. But I can’t call this game a 100% simulator. First of all, you can drop off a stuck car here, secondly, you can freely change the camera, which makes it very easy to pass routes, and thirdly, almost any task can be completed in 4×4 mode with two locked differentials, so there is no particular variety here. Again, there is almost no snow, mud, or ice, except for a little bit on the last map.

Maps differ in appearance and complexity. Somewhere we have a desert; somewhere we have a canyon, steeper cliffs and tracks over an abyss; somewhere we have some ice and bridges. The tracks are challenging and interesting, but there are really not many of them, the maps are small, and there is a lack of some tasks like urgent delivery of medicines or evacuation of the wounded. Yes, it’s a small indie project, but if the game supported the Steam Workshop, the mods would be able to improve it. Let’s hope that the next time the author of Pure Rock Crawling will take a shot at a larger project, if not with an open world, then at least with larger maps, a campaign, and support for mods. That would be cool.

But for this to happen, it’s worth supporting this project, especially since it’s open until November 11, 2024. Pure Rock Crawling can be purchased with a 25% discount for only 243 UAH. A very nice price, so pay attention to this game.