Russian Car Designer 3D Vaz 2606

Being a car mechanic is not an easy job, especially nowadays when they are designed to be as difficult to take apart as possible. On the other hand, robots are now a lot more useful in this field, and so are computers. Nothing beats the feel of fixing something with your own hands, however, which is why so many people enjoy working on restoration projects.

Fix and design your own race car

Russian Car Designer 3D Vaz 2606 is a pretty unusual sandbox game in which you get to put a car together almost from scratch and then use it to race around a couple of basic tracks. The racing part is not as polished as the building aspect, on the other hand, which is great if you are more interested in how a car works than how it runs on the race track.
You are given a stripped down vehicle in the beginning with barely enough parts to be called a car, as well as enough cash to put something decent together. After that, you have to figure out where everything goes and buy the necessary parts in order to get what you want. There are not many design possibilities except for the handful of colors and patterns, but then again that doesn’t really matter.

Not enough explanations to get you started

Unfortunately, the game lacks a tutorial of any kind, so you are really in the dark when you first start playing. There are hundreds of components that are part of the car, and they have to be mounted in the right order. The game tells you whether you can mount a part or not, but there’s no way of keeping track of these things. It would be nice to have a more progressive learning curve, such as starting with simple part replacements and slowly working your way to a complete dismantle.
The interface is very poor as well, since you only see a very small tooltip with the part’s name when you hover over it. Although it’s possible to switch between a few preset views and rotate the camera freely in 3D, it’s still very difficult to find your way around the room. The shop is also very simple and misleading, with way too many abbreviations that might confuse newcomers.

Needs more work in the interface department

All in all, Russian Car Designer 3D Vaz 2606 is actually a very nice idea, but it lacks a proper presentation to make it a true hit with the crowds. A tutorial would have been very nice, and a better interface would have had a great impact on the overall experience.