Spintires is a sim so niche it makes Munich Bus Simulator look mainstream. It's a game about navigating old Soviet trucks across muddy, waterlogged terrain, and it's kinda brilliant—a gruelling battle against nature where you try and heave a stubborn lump of metal through the sludge, wheels churning, engine wheezing, belching black smoke into the grey sky. But for someone on the Spintires dev team, this wasn't quite bleak enough. It needed to be bleaker.

Cue the game's recently released Chernobyl DLC, which dumps you in a radiation-poisoned chunk of Ukraine that includes parts of the city of Pripyat, a load of mud trails and forests, and the reactor itself. You play as a logger—one of many who have travelled to the exclusion zone to harvest its wood, according to what I will generously refer to as the DLC's story. Your job is ferrying increasingly precarious stacks of logs from place to place, and that's it.

There isn't a huge amount to do in Spintires. It's a pretty bare-bones game. But what I love about it is how something as simple as driving from A to B can become wonderfully tense and challenging if you encounter a particularly rough stretch of terrain. You have to make use of your differential lock and winch to claw your way out of the mire, without destroying your truck in the process. These little self-contained pockets of drama are what keep me playing.

Your life is made more difficult in the Chernobyl DLC by the inclusion of radiation hotspots. Certain parts of the map are bristling with dangerous radioactive energy, which slowly damages your truck (and its payload) over time, meaning you have to get out of there quick—which is easier said than done when your back wheel has carved into a patch of sloppy mud, spinning hopelessly. The map isn't massive, but feels bigger than it is, purely because getting around the thing is so damn challenging.

'STALKER with trucks' might just sound like a grabby headline, but it really does remind me of it. People trying to eke a living out of a dangerous, inhospitable place, where the environment itself is a hazard. That constant feeling of struggle, of battling the elements. And, on a more superficial level, it just looks a whole lot like STALKER's grimy, overcast vision of the exclusion zone. I would love to see this kind of off-road vehicle simulation in the next STALKER.

Apart from the radiation, however, this is just more Spintires. If you didn't get on with the base game, this won't do much to change your mind. But if you have a weakness for Chernobyl as a setting, and want to experience some of that understated STALKER-like atmosphere in a different context, it might be worth a look. And if you miss the strangely compelling, yet utterly bleak, atmosphere of HBO's recent Chernobyl miniseries, this might scratch a radioactive itch. You can buy the DLC on Steam now for a not great, not terrible $5.

Spintires: Chernobyl looks pretty gloomy, as you might expect from a sim about trudging through the muddy Exclusion Zone with only your truck for company. It's due out in a week and you can get a glimpse of it in action in the teaser above. 

There's a hint of the post-apocalypse about it, and combined with all the cargo deliveries, I'm getting a Death Stranding vibe. Maybe I've just been playing too much Death Stranding. It's more than just a superficial similarity, though, and it's not just the Chernobyl expansion.  

Like Death Stranding, Spintires' environment is the biggest obstacle. The uneven, muddy ground creates a lot of problems for heavy trucks, just as the rocky Icelandic terrain of post-apocalyptic North America poses a problem for Sam. The bulk of the game is just finding the best route to your destination, and in both cases the experience is oddly meditative. You won't have to look after a weird, magic baby in Spintires, though, which is a relief. Being a dad is too stressful. 

If going for a drive in the Exclusion Zone sounds like a treat, you'll be able to grab Spintires: Chernobyl when it launches on Steam on December 13. 

Spintires, the driving sim that reflects man's primal battle with nature by making you drive through loads of mud, is now going to Chernobyl in a new expansion. It's like Stalker, but you're only interested in finding logging sites and keeping your precious truck running.

As a trucker, you'll have to drive around the exclusion zone to hunt down prize logging sites, while also trying to avoid getting blasted by radiation—you get a Geiger counter—or damaging your vehicle during your off-road shenanigans. The expansion includes two new vehicles, the B-157 and B-505, which will hopefully be hardy enough for the tough job. 

The power plant, Pripyat, Red Forest, Kupsta Lake and the Duga Radar have all been recreated, so you can go on a lovely, morbid sightseeing tour. With the HBO miniseries still pretty fresh in my mind, I'd honestly rather not. 

The expansion is for Oovee Games' original Spintires from 2014, rather than Mudrunner (formerly Spintires: Mudrunner), an updated version of the game from Saber Interactive and Focus.  It's the third piece of DLC to appear this year, but seems considerably larger than the previous two. 

You'll be able to fight radioactive mud in December.

I love everything about Spintires. I love the mud and the trucks and the way that the game takes what is a slightly silly premise so seriously. The semi-sequel, updated version, Spintires: MudRunner is due out on October 31, but in the meantime, why not watch this needlessly dramatic trailer?

I feel more rugged just listening to this man—let’s assume that he’s the chap inside all of the big trucks and jeeps you’re controlling—detailing just how important and epic driving through the dirt is. 

This new edition offers updated graphics, five new environments, a challenge mode and 13 extra vehicles, on top of everything that comes with the vanilla game. There’s also a 50% discount for owners of the original. Without the discount, it will set you back $30/£25/€30.

Spintires is one of those games that you either really dig, or completely don't. It's about driving big, Soviet-era trucks through thick, Soviet-era mud—not racing or in pursuit of any grand quest, but just grinding through it however you can. Despite its obviously (very) niche appeal it was quite a success, but a fallout between the developer and publisher led to controversy, and even a temporary removal from Steam. 

That was all eventually smoothed over, and the game is now back on Steam. Not only that, but a new version called Spintires: Mudrunner is on the way as well. The "ultimate version" of Spintires will feature a "total graphical overhaul," a new sandbox map alongside the five environments in the original game, a challenge mode with nine dedicated maps, and 13 new vehicles, taking the total to 19. And happily, development is once again being headed up by Pavel Zagrebelny, the creator of the original game. 

So the core game sounds essentially unchanged, but that's not necessarily a bad approach to take. Spintires isn't the sort of game that's ever going to become a mainstream hit, but it's held onto its audience remarkably well: Its average concurrent user count in July 2014 was 1,239, and its average concurrent user count last month—July 2017—was 1,124.   

Spintires: Mudrunner is available for pre-purchase now on Steam for ten percent off its regular $30/£25/€30 price, with another 50 percent off for owners of the original. It's expected to be ready for release in October. 

A strange and troubling spot of drama recently swept through the Spintires community, in the form of allegations that developer Pavel Zagrebelnyj had inserted crash-inducing time bombs into the game's code in retaliation for the failure of publisher Oovee to pay him for his work. Four different bugs appeared in quick succession, each of them fixed by Spintires users, before sales of the game on Steam were suspended outright. Oovee said in a statement that nothing untoward was happening, that the problems were simply the result of conventional bugs, and that it was actually working with Zagrebelnyj to fix them. And even though the whole situation looked dodgy as hell, Zagrebelnyj has confirmed that it is in fact the case.

I did not do anything to make the game malfunction intentionally. Programming is a tricky business and everybody creates bugs—the problem is, that one was a critical bug that wasn't fixed in time, he said in an email. As for why the bugs seemingly appeared out of nowhere, so long after the game's release, he continued, There were multiple big updates—last one some two months ago, which fixed many old bugs... and introduced new ones, apparently.

Zagrebelnyj doesn't know why it was necessary to remove the game from Steam, nor does he have any control over getting it back. This can only be done by Oovee, he said. But he did confirm that the game is now fixed, and what happened shouldn't happen again.

As for his reported dispute with Oovee over lack of payment, he attributed the claim of missed payments reported by Eurogamer to the fact that he's just not very good at interviews, adding, [I] say a lot of things that make everything worse. He declined to comment on the state of his relationship with the publisher, however, or to say whether his dispute with it has been resolved.

Spintires is now back on Steam, and Oovee has promised a full and frank statement regarding the cause of the problem and how we plan to avoid this happening again within the next few days. It also warned that the DLL fix created by forum user Localhost must be removed if it was installed, and Steam restarted, before the game will work properly.

Remember Spintires? It's the extraordinarily Russian off-road driving sim that earned attention for both its unique subject material (and accurate rendition thereof) and the ugly conflict between creator Pavel Zagrebelnyj and UK-based publisher Oovee. Those problems appeared to be ironed out early last year, but last week Zagrebelnyj told Eurogamer that the publisher owes him a shitload of money, but that there hasn't been any real communication between the parties for the better part of a year.

Coincidentally or not, Spintires was very recently struck by a rash of seemingly out-of-nowhere bugs that have caused it to crash or malfunction in various ways. And according to this post on Reddit, it's actually Zagrebelnyj's doing: It alleges that he's inserted time bombs into the game code that are responsible for the troubles. There have been four of them so far, each eventually fixed—unofficially—by a user.

Oovees, however, denied what it called press speculation about the game being intentionally sabotaged. The situation on the bug is that we became aware of a major bug last week that caused the game to stop for some users. We have been working on this with Pavel since it came up. Progress on the next planned update has been suspended while we sort the bug issue, it wrote on its forums. We believe we have now identified the problem and are now testing at this very moment a hot fix provided by Pavel, who is also ready to help further if needed. We're fully focused now on making the game work properly again, so please allow us to get this sorted first and we'll then be able to explain what has caused this and then carry on with future updates we have planned.

Despite the apparent imminence of a fix, however, Oovee has suspended sales of Spintires on Steam. It's still listed, but there's currently no option to purchase it, or even follow or add it to a wishlist. I'm not a coder, but that seems like a rather extreme step to take in the process of fixing a conventional bug—and I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but the sudden appearance of crippling bugs nearly two years after a game's release seems a little hinky, too.

I've reached out to Zagrebelnyj and Oovees for clarification, and I'll update when I learn more.

Thanks, PCGamesN.

Spintires is a game about making trucks real muddy, and what a wonderful niche to snuggle up in. Andy noted that there wasn't a whole lot to it in his review, and while updates have been promised for a while now, they've been slow going. That might be because of "communication problems" between developer Pavel Zagrebelnyj and publisher Oovee, or maybe everyone involved is trying to reverse out of a muddy swamp. Probably the former, but you never know.

Anyhoo—Spintires has been updated. With five lovely new trucks. And know that official modding tools, and Steam Workshop support, are on the way soon. Those trucks are the B-66, B-131, C-4310, D-537 and K-700, and I bet you can't wait to deform terrain with their big wheels, and slather their chassis in sloppy mud.

As for Steam Workshop support, that's mostly done, albeit "with some finishing off to do".

"The remaining programming that needs to be done could not be completed until this build was stable," Oovee say. "This is where we had to make a decision, either 1) release the update as it stands, with workshop and the editors to follow over the coming weeks, or 2) break the news to you that you would not be receiving the update that is ready to be released, until workshop and the editors were ready to go.

"After much consideration, we have made the decision to release this stable iteration of the update, minus full workshop implementation and the editors due to them being incomplete at this time."

The full patch notes are located here. (Cheers, RPS.)

Spintires is very much a niche game. It's about driving rough, rugged, Soviet-era vehicles through mud deep enough to drown a giraffe. And that's really about it. Even so, it found enough of an audience to sell 100,000 copies in relatively short order, making it a legitimate indie hit, but things seemed to turn sour late last year when developer Pavel Zagrebelnyj said publisher Oovee had made off with the money and frozen him out of his own creation.

But in a statement posted today, Tony Fellas of Oovees blamed most of the trouble on "communications issues," with both customers and Zagrebelnyj, which have now been cleared up. "We openly admit that communications between Oovee and our customers have been weak over the last few months. Our customer base grew far beyond what we initially expected and we needed to cater for that quickly—the development plans became sketchy and before we knew it we had a runaway train. Please accept our apologies," he wrote.

A small bug-fix update to Spintires is currently in testing, while a larger one expected in April will incorporate mod support. A DLC release is expected to come out in the summer, and plans for a proper sequel are also being kicked around.

"How can we possibly talk about the next iteration of Spintires when we still haven t finished improving the current version of Spintires? Well to be fair, software is never finished and we understand that. But with the huge success of the Spintires release, it s kind of a no-brainer but to continue the franchise and create an even better game with a larger team and a larger budget," Fellas wrote. "So with great pleasure we can confirm that planning has commenced for the next iteration of Spintires, whatever form it may come in."

In a follow-up post, Zagrebelnyj said images of a Skype chat in which he reportedly made disparaging comments about Oovee were faked. "I was pissed with our situation but I never said anything like it… Thanks to Tony our "communication" problems are now in the past, so expect new cool stuff for Spintires soon!" 

Spintires is an off-road driving simulator in which you take hard-as-nails Soviet-era vehicles on excursions through the rugged Russian wilderness. The outstanding physics make for a very realistic simulation of hardcore off-roading, but as a game, it doesn't have a whole lot else going on. You're not racing for the flag against other players or hurrying to evacuate Strelok from the Exclusion Zone; you're just driving around muddy woods. Andy Kelly said in his June review that it felt like an Early Access game because its scope is so limited, and now it appears that it could stay that way forever.

In a message posted on the Russian social network VK and translated on Steam, developer Pavel Zagrebelnyj accused UK-based publisher Oovee of taking the money and skipping town, leaving him unable to update the game. "Sad news... just seemed like the development process started, I almost finished my map and tools to develop mods (free upgrade)... as our Englishmen from oovee together with the loot disappeared," he said. "I don't have permissions to upload the update to Steam. So now I'll complete and release map editor, in the version it is now, and this will be end of Spintires."

He also claimed that Oovee was deleting his posts from its official English-language forum, effectively cutting him off from a large part of his audience. Oovee, however, has denied the allegations, saying Zagrebelnyj has been paid in full and that there is no breach of contract on either side. It also expressed hope that development will resume soon, and said that talks to expand the team to allow for faster and more wide-ranging development were also planned.

"Unfortunately there have been some communication issues recently which appear to have lead to this post being made by Pavel on the Russian forum," it wrote on its own forums. "Oovee has not been notified of any contract terminations or anything of that matter—a discussion will be held on the subject to rectify any misunderstandings."

As for future updates, it added, "As Oovee owns the rights to Spintires, we have no plans of our own to halt and/or cease to develop the game further."

Zagrebelnyj said he still holds the rights to the technology and source code, however, and may use that to create another, similar game.