Mini Motorways tips - Expert tips for beginners

Houses can spawn with their front doors on the wrong side, but did you know you can change them around at any time? If you simply attempt to draw a road from the opposite side of a house, well, you can make that house point in a different direction.

This is especially helpful if you're attempting to divide the traffic that your city will have to deal with, and you can make things nice and neat, too.

Try to have 2 to 3 houses meeting at a junction, and then merging that into the main road artery. It'll make things so much easier for you, given you have enough road tiles!

Motorways are one of the more important bits of kit in your arsenal, alongside bridges.

Motorways will allow you to make roads over the top of buildings and other roads, allowing you to direct traffic better. This is especially helpful when trying to alleviate traffic later in the game.

When should you build a Motorway?

Simple - if you see a building has just received an upgrade in the other side of the city and you need to get your residents there ASAP, then build a Motorway connecting from the main road artery where the houses meet (see Tip #2) onto the street in front of it.

If you want to avoid early death, then you best start collecting those Motorways every single time. That's right - EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. Oh, and before you ask, 1 Motorway can be as long as you make it - it doesn't count like the Road tiles do, so 1 Motorway tile can be stretched across the entire city.

When to build Bridges?

Bridges are more simple, and they allow you to cross bodies of water. In the early stages of the game, this will barely be needed, but in others, they're absolutely essential to join your roads together.

If you are in a city where water is essentially everywhere, you want to avoid using bridges from the start. Save them for later, when you get a better understanding of where each building will spawn. Then, use bridges to help you smooth things out.

As you progress through the game you will likely have more road tiles than you actually need - well, that's assuming you've been neat thus far, of course.

But once you have plenty spare, it's time to open up those roads.

Make alternate routes, longer rounds, more space for cars to take up so smaller areas don't get crowded and ruin your game. It's difficult to balance, but if you have more than enough, don't be stingy with road tiles.

You might have heard about roundabouts, but if you haven't seen them in action (in real life, of course), you can't exactly understand just how amazing they truly are. In Mini Motorways, roundabouts will help you make the traffic a lot more fluid, especially at the junctions where multiple colours meet.

• Here is how to get every mystery character in Crossy Road!

You should always place a roundabout instead of a crossroad, especially if you tend to get multiple roads meeting somewhere in the middle.

That's right - there are some tips that only experts use, and they've managed to hold onto them long enough. This is one such tip.

If you place a road tile let's say at the corner of your building in a cross-section, you will stop ANY building from spawning there - shops, houses, anything. Place empty roads that aren't tied to anything in those areas and you can trick the game into spawning buildings where you want them to spawn.

Traffic lights might sound like a great idea, but once your city starts expanding, they will soon make the entire lane come to a standstill. Like we've suggested in Tip #5, roundabouts are the way to go.

Avoid using traffic lights, or use as few as possible, placed mostly in areas where there will be no massive traffic, such as junctions between houses or similar locations. In the highly populated (or should I say, circulated?) areas use roundabouts or nothing at all - it's better than traffic lights.

If you have a number of houses in one area - say, an adorable cul-de-sac or a few houses placed next to each other, link them all by alleys (normal roads) and then lead them into the main road artery. Does that make sense?

Basically, you'll never link a house to the main road, because that will slightly disrupt the traffic and make it slower. Instead, you'll have 2-3 houses leading into one road, and once you've got 3-4 such roads, you'll link them into one big road artery. Or a roundabout.

The indicators will show you how long each trip takes - if something doesn't feel right, you need to edit it ASAP. And I mean, ASAP!! If you have a winding road that takes forever to reach your destination from the early stages, you can imagine that road will only get worse as the game progresses.

Make short roads and always check the timers. If necessary, pause the game to think and re-think positioning and strategies. That takes us to our next, Mini Motorways Tip #10!

As the title says, you can always pause the game and make a change. Or more. Whatever you see fit.

The game relies solely on strategy as you're shifting into the later stages of the game and that only means one thing - you need to think every move through. There is a pause button that you should use by all means, and if there is something that you think could do with a little editing, then go ahead and delete roads, move roundabouts and construct Motorways as needed.

It's one of the Mini Motorways tips that will save you a lot of time and points, so make sure to always remember that it's an option!