Bad at puzzles, Olexa's Mini Motorways gave me the anxiety of waiting at a red light

This time I wasn't sure it counted as a "puzzle"

Hi, I'm Tsumiki. Episode 13 of "Can't Solve Them, Still Hooked." This time I brought something that actually sparked a small debate in my own head. On the surface, it looks completely like a city-building game. But underneath, it's a genuine spatial puzzle — endlessly figuring out how to draw a single line, a road, so that traffic doesn't jam.

Today's pick is English-language Olexa, who covers a wide range of lesser-known but great indie games. This time he played "Mini Motorways."

What I watched today

Today it's Olexa's "THIS GAME IS AMAZING! | Olexa Looks at: Mini Motorways." Take a look below first.

"Mini Motorways" is made by New Zealand's Dinosaur Polo Club (the studio behind "Mini Metro"). You connect color-coded houses to buildings with roads, using upgrades like traffic lights and roundabouts, and try to build a network that lets cars flow without jamming before the clock runs out.

What I think while watching, hopeless at solving

The most interesting part was that Olexa's big reaction moments weren't when he solved something — they were when traffic jammed. In most puzzle let's plays, people groan when they're stuck and cheer when they solve it. This game flips that: the moment you finish laying out your network, you still can't relax, because you only find out it's wrong once the cars actually start driving. So the whole video stays tense, for the viewer too.

I also loved how the layout that was correct a minute ago stops working as the city grows. A puzzle where your past answer quietly turns wrong over time is a pretty rare type among everything I've covered so far.

Olexa keeps predicting what's coming next, and sometimes he's just flat-out wrong about it — "whoa, I read that completely wrong" — and that unfiltered reaction was really nice to watch.

So it's okay not to solve it

"Mini Motorways" — if I played it myself, I'm confident my third city would turn solid red and I'd just stare at the screen sipping mugicha for a long, long time. But even without solving anything, just thinking "ah, this city used to look so clean before it jammed" was plenty of fun to watch.

Are you good at puzzles where the correct answer keeps changing over time? Or do you want to build it once and relax? I'm firmly the latter. My mugicha ran out. Not sure which game to feature next — tell me in the comments, it helps me pick.