Pure Rock Crawling involves driving off-road vehicles over rocky terrain. The idea is to press the gas pedal and turn the steering wheel in such a way that you lunge forward and overcome obstacles, rather than falling backwards. It’s MudRunner without the mud, with stunning simplicity, probably thanks to its seemingly one-man development team. It launched last October, but I only heard about it today when a novel map was added, and now I want to play it.
The Steam page boasts the features you need: cushioned tires, suspension you can adjust as if you knew what you were doing, and a wide range of different types of terrain you can move through with ease. The newest piece of terrain is a map called Ghost Mine, based on photogrammetric resources created by the game creator after a trip to Death Valley.
It looks like Pure Rock Crawling was released in Early Access in April 2018 and reached version 1.0 in October 2024. I honestly don’t know how I’ve never heard of this before, but it looks like the 1.0 release is about it it hasn’t ended since then, there have been tons of novel updates.
I liked Spintires when it came out about ten years ago, but lost track of it when it got mired in controversy and was replaced by MudRunners. There’s something incredibly satisfying about overcoming obstacles, whether you’re driving gigantic equipment or even a dirt bike in a game like Trials. I’m not interested in high scores or improving my times, but I’ll definitely try to get into the mountains.
Pure Rock Crawling is 50% off to coincide with the release of the novel map, which at the time of writing is priced at £6.39 / $7.49 / €7.39.
