Inner-City traffic is a stressful thing, driving in it doesn’t seem much fun, it can be worse to be cyclist in it, and being a pedestrian is often joyless when everyone is honking their horns and swearing at each other. The good news is that Urban Flow is not an inner-city anxiety simulator and instead a puzzle game about making sure that drivers stay angry and not dead.
Comprised of 100s of levels, challenges and an endless mode, Urban Flow is based around single screens of a network of city streets. Cars come in from all angles and the player is required to turn lights from red to green to let them pass, but make sure they don’t collide. The lights are mapped to face buttons, or the bumpers/triggers. There are special vehicles that mix things up, like the ambulance that needs to be let through as soon as possible, or the dumpster truck that causes refuse that needs to be cleared up.
The player is scored on how many cars successfully get to their destination before they cause too many collisions.
The art style is muted with all of the streets and vehicles having simply identifiable shapes. It works really well given the hectic nature of the gameplay, and allows for filtering information very easily.
The levels get more elaborate with more traffic lights to control, and Urban Flow expects you to track linked traffic lights – whereby one button will affect multiple spots at the same time. The challenge is layered on at a satisfying pace with early levels being easy enough to score the maximum three stars, and later levels bringing together all of the previous challenges in a cohesive manner.
Special note should go to the music – a good mix of lofi hip-hop that soothes as you do the equivalent of rub your stomach and pat your head.
There is not much more to say about Urban Flow; it is a tight little package that feels like a must for fans of frantic puzzle games.
Conclusion
Urban Flow is a clean, simple puzzle game that can lead to some frantic multi-tasking. If that appeals then this is must have.
This game was reviewed based on Xbox S|X review code, using an Xbox S|X console. All of the opinions and insights here are subject to that version. Game provided by publisher.
