''Spintires'' is a 2014

off-roading Off-roading is the activity of driving or riding in a vehicle on unpaved surfaces such as sand, gravel, riverbeds, mud, snow, rocks, and other natural terrain. Types of off-roading range in intensity, from leisure drives with unmodified vehicl ...

simulation video game Simulation video games are a diverse super-category of video games, generally designed to closely simulate real world activities. A simulation game attempts to copy various activities from real life in the form of a game for various purposes such ...

by UK-based developer Oovee Game Studios. In ''Spintires'', players take control of off-road vehicles and drive them through muddy off-road terrain to complete objectives. The game was released on June 13, 2014, and has since sold over one million copies. A spin-off game called '' MudRunner'' was released on October 30, 2017.

Gameplay

''Spintires'' is an all-terrain simulation video game which tasks driving through muddy unpaved Russian roads in aging Soviet vehicles with nothing but a map and a compass. The aim of the game is to transport cargo to its destination without depleting resources (such as fuel) or damaging the vehicle. There is both a single-player and multiplayer mode. The game takes into account several properties such as physics, mud, terrain deformation, as well as driving controls and a day/night cycle. Due to the challenging terrain, players must take all conditions into consideration and drive accordingly; for example, they cannot simply just press "forward" on their keyboard to drive straight. Players can choose between casual and hardcore mode. In hardcore mode, fuel consumption is increased and routes the player charts on the map won't be displayed as a guide on the road as they drive. The game's camera is positioned outside the vehicle and can be moved around using the mouse; there is no in-car view.

Development

Development of the game was preceded by a demo game made by Pavel Zagrebelnyy for the 2009

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Level Up game development competition, where the game won the first prize in the 'Best Multithreaded Game' category and finished second in the 'best game optimized for Intel graphics' category. The game initially raised $82,684 on

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in 2013. A few days following its release, ''Spintires'' briefly became the top-selling video game on the

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platform, and a month after it still retained a position in the Steam Top 10, selling over 100,000 copies. In 2014, developer Zagrebelny alleged that Oovee took the money and cut off communication, which left him unable to update it. Oovee, however, has denied the allegations, saying Zagrebelnyy has been paid in full for the work he completed and that there is no breach of contract on the side of Oovee. Later, both Oovee and Zagrebelnyy attributed the dispute to "communications issues", and said that an eventual sequel to ''Spintires'' was a possibility. In December 2015, Oovee opened up the game to its player base with Steam Workshop support, seeing the release of its truck and map editor. A news post on the ''Spintires'' Steam page by Oovee, suggested that ''Spintires'' was not over as many had suggested, and showed signs of further graphical improvements and additions to gameplay. Throughout 2019, ''Spintires'' has received numerous updates including fixes, graphical enhancements and DLC.

Release and reception

''Spintires'' was released on June 13, 2014, and had sold more than 100,000 copies by July. ''Spintires'' has received mixed reviews. Christian Donlan of ''

Eurogamer ''Eurogamer'' is a British video game journalism website launched in 1999 and owned by alongside formed company Gamer Network. Its editor-in-chief is Martin Robinson. Since 2008, it is known for the formerly eponymous games trade fair EGX ...

'' placed ''Spintires'' onto the site's "Games of 2014", writing, "''Spintires'' can make a set-piece out of a puddle. ''Spintires'' can make precisely zero mph feel like knuckle-splintering stuff. ''Spintires'' is a roguelike in which you load the game up, roll a wheeled character, and see how far you can get on a single tank of gas", and that it was "ugly but beautiful, and fixated with the beauty of ugliness." Andy Kelly, for PC Gamer, scored ''Spintires'' 60/100, commending the game's gameplay and variety of vehicles. However, he also found fault with the game's limited scope and camera system, writing, " ..as endearingly bizarre as I find ''Spintires'', and as much as I admire the technology, I can't say I really ever ''enjoyed'' it. There are moments of what I could loosely call excitement—like almost rolling over and spilling my load just metres from the delivery point, or thinking I was crossing a shallow pond only to become totally submersed in a river—but they're few and far between. Mostly I just find myself swearing at mud." James Cunningham in ''Hardcore Gamer'' praised the game, stating, " ..''Spintires'' is a game that wants people to play rather than work. The great outdoors is big and beautiful, and the maps have plenty of personality and memorable locations, but they’re also the enemy. The inviting gameplay and lovely scenery make it easy to underestimate what an unforgiving bastard the great outdoors can be, but it only takes getting irretrievably stuck a couple of times before that illusion gets shattered. After that it’s time to stomp the scenery flat with the biggest earth-gouging, fume belching trucks ''Spintires'' has to offer." Phil Hartup of ''New Statesman'' rated ''Spintires'' as the video game with the Best Visuals of 2014, claiming, "What I saw in ''Spintires'' was mud. The best mud I have ever seen in a game. I saw mud that splattered and squelched and I saw water that flowed around in the treads of the tyres of my truck and pooled in the mud furrows. I would stare at it, and not just because I was often hopelessly stuck. It might be a low key game about trucks and trees, but there are a lot that other games should learn from ''Spintires''."

Controversy

It was alleged by developer and publisher Oovee, that lead developer and original creator of the game, Pavel Zagrebelnyy, sabotaged the game code in retaliation for alleged financial misconduct by Oovee against the developer. Zagrebelnyy eventually cooperated with Oovee to fix game-breaking bugs, with both denying that the bugs were introduced deliberately. However in 2015, Zegrebelnyy started working at

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, a former employer of his, to aid development of '' MudRunner'' and Oovee licensed the game to Saber Interactive.

References

External links