As the sun rises over another puzzle in “Fix the Road, please,” the piano hums quietly and the trumpet roars. The sun shone on this miniature diorama, and I destroyed, twisted, and rebuilt it until after the road was fixed, its figurines suddenly turned into fireworks, and the whole scene split and morphed into the next.
The presentation adds an almost cinematic flair to this delightful puzzle game. However, as healthy as it looks, please fix the road is actually a scary little thing.
On the surface, this seems simple: as the title suggests, you just fix the road, right? Insert a few curves, connect the points, and voila! Cars, boats, cows, etc. intersect and arrive at their intended flag destination.
Incorrect! It’s not just about simply putting the right tiles in place. The solution may seem obvious, but the game tells you which tiles are available and in what order, which adds to the challenge considerably.
While some puzzles give you parts of the road – curves, straights, ramps, etc. – that snap into place like a kid’s train, others give you more maneuverable tiles. There are bombs to destroy before rebuilding; rotating tiles; moving and duplicating tiles; moving a row of tiles in a specific direction; all of which have a fixed size or a Tetris-like shape. It’s the use of these tiles that really adds creativity to every puzzle solution.
For example, a puzzle had an obvious tile that could be inserted into place, but before that I had to wisely waste a whole bunch of bomb tiles to destroy half of the environment first. In other puzzles I need to use multiple shift tiles to move the pieces, like those sliding picture puzzles. In later puzzles, I needed to move the pieces out of the play area and even subtly duplicate empty areas. All for the purpose of connecting multiple car mini highways, unraveling dirt roads for cows to get home, or getting rivers and roads to criss-cross properly.
So yes, a diabolical little thing. All the while, as my brain hummed, its soundtrack shuffled through multiple tunes—jazz melodies, orchestral, plucked guitars. Is it gentle companionship, or mockery? Hard to say.
But when the last piece of the puzzle is in place, those cars and cows are thrown into the air and the whole puzzle is reversed to form the next one. Or it could split into lines that swim like dolphins. Or it spins and reveals something new. It’s like Dorfromantik in Inception.
It is the meticulous attention to detail that elevates a simple idea into something irresistible and immensely satisfying. Despite the minimalist approach, every colorful cityscape or peaceful idyll feels inviting and tactile.
There are 160 levels to pass (after the patch update), which is baffling – depending on your skill level of course. Thankfully, there’s a hint button that lines up the first few moves for you, so if you’re completely clueless where to start, the game offers a trailer for its (sometimes very unexpected) solution. For a game that often requires as much trial and error as brain power, undo and redo are just a button.
A small setback is the inability to change the opinion. Each diorama is held in place equidistantly. You can move left and right or zoom in and out slightly. But some puzzles do benefit from being able to rotate the environment, peruse from multiple angles, and zoom in for a closer look. Many puzzles have tiles of multiple heights, but sometimes it’s hard to tell exactly how they’ll fit together.
It’s a small complaint, though. Please Fix The Road isn’t really trying to mock you, it’s trying to teach you how to behave. This can be said to be a meditation on humans and nature, destroying the environment only to rebuild them both organically and inorganically. But mostly, it’s just a wholesome and enjoyable puzzle game that doesn’t get frustrating. Even the title is polite.
