Expeditions: A MudRunner Game

I want to be upfront about something: this game will absolutely make you sit and stare at a muddy riverbed for ten minutes deciding whether your truck can ford it, and you will enjoy every second of that deliberation. Expeditions shifts the MudRunner formula away from city-adjacent hauling contracts and plants you fully in the wilderness, across locations including Little Colorado, Arizona, and the Carpathian Mountains, tasking you with scientific survey work instead of simple delivery runs. That framing change matters more than it sounds. The core loop is still a terrain-traversal puzzle. Before you even leave base camp, you have to pick the right truck for the job, load the correct equipment (seismic survey gear is too heavy for most smaller rigs), and mentally plot a route you might have to completely rethink the moment you hit a swamp. Tools you will actually use constantly: the echo sounder tells you whether a river crossing is safe before you drown your engine, the winch and portable anchors haul you out of the mud or up a steep grade, and the drone lets you scout ahead from the air to find points of interest and safer lines. One wrong angle on a boulder and you are flipping the jack screw to right your truck, then replaying 20-30 minutes of careful progress. The game warns you this will happen. It still stings every time. The accessibility gap between this entry and its predecessors is real, though. Waypoints are provided for everything, the menus are clean and easy to navigate mid-mission, and the early Colorado maps function as a gentle ramp before things get genuinely mean. Long-time SnowRunner players have mixed feelings about this, with some finding it a softer, less satisfying version of the open-ended chaos they loved. New players, on the other hand, finally have a MudRunner entry that does not immediately bury them without explanation. The mission structure does draw criticism: a stretch of scouting objectives in the mid-game can feel like padding, and the sheer volume of map exploration tasks tests patience even for fans of slow games. Reviewer consensus across the board sits at "good but not great" for series veterans, warmer for newcomers. Co-op, added as a free post-launch update, is where Expeditions genuinely comes alive if you have the right crowd. Up to four players online, cross-play supported, with shared map exploration, joint rewards, winch-to-winch towing of each other's disasters, and fuel or part trading mid-expedition. There is no split-screen, so couch sessions are out, but organizing an online session with three people who will competently fail together is a genuinely strong time. Season 1 (Cave Odyssey) added cave environments with tighter traversal challenges, two new vehicles including the six-wheeled Step 72-49 Albatross and the nimble Shiba Overlander scout, plus new Specialist crew members that give passive bonuses like improved drone speed and airdrop marking. That is a solid content leg-up for anyone buying now versus at launch.

Riley · Scout Team

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