Pure Rock Crawling is about steering off road vehicles across rocky terrain. It’s about pumping the gas pedal and wrenching the steering wheel just so, such that you lurch forward and over the obstacles, rather than tumbling backwards. It’s MudRunner without the mud, with a knockabout simplicity presumably as a result of its apparently one-man development team. It launched last October but I hadn’t heard of it until today, when a new map was added, and now I want to play it.
The Steam page boasts of the features you’d want: it’s got soft body physics on the tires, suspension that you can tweak as if you know what you’re doing, and a range of different kinds of terrain to free roam around. The latest hunk of terrain is a map called Ghost Mine, based on photogrammetry assets created by the game’s maker after a trip to Death Valley.
It seems like Pure Rock Crawling was released in Early Access in April 2018 and hit 1.0 in October 2024. I really don’t know how I’ve never heard of it before, but it looks like its 1.0 release hasn’t stopped there being a trickle of new updates in the months since.
I liked Spintires back when it came out some ten years ago, then lost track of it when it became mired in the mud of controversy and was succeeded by MudRunners. There’s something supremely satisfying about getting up and over an obstacle, whether you’re driving a big rig or even a dirt bike in a game like Trials. I have no interest in high scores or improving my times, but I will absolutely have a go at hauling myself up a mountain.
Pure Rock Crawling is 50% off to coincide with the release of the new map, making it £6.39/$7.49/€7.39 at the time of writing.