Names are important when it comes to Mini Motorways. That's in part because names are important when it comes to cities. This is a game that tasks you with drawing the highway infrastructure for a series of famous cities around the world, but the whole thing is cleanly abstracted. I can recognise the abstracted Los Angeles from Mini Motorways because I've played it for so long - actually I can see it in my sleep - but it's still nice to play this map and think of the name. I'm not anywhere. I'm not nowhere. I'm back in LA.
And names are important when it comes to modes, maybe? Mini Motorways' latest update adds two new modes to the game. The first is Endless, which is pretty self-explanatory. The second is Expert, which is absolutely brutal and brilliant. Excellent stuff, but for a while early on I kind of wondered if Expert might be the wrong name for it. Or, to put it another way, it's made me ponder what being really good at Mini Motorways might actually look like.
Expert mode is certainly a real challenge. The idea is quietly alarming. The first wrinkle? You get more upgrade options at the end of each week to start with, but then after eight weeks it's just road tiles. Got that? Get your roundabouts and motorways in fast. The other wrinkle is so terrifying I feel like I should whisper it: decisions are permanent. There's a touch of the exam board chill to that one. What it means is that after a short period of time - very short - every tile you place down is fixed in place forever.