I played on: Steam Deck
I paid: £20.99
Available on: Steam, Xbox Series S & X
Notes: N/A
I paid: £20.99
Available on: Steam, Xbox Series S & X
Notes: N/A
Star Trucker is a trucking simulator in the same vein of Euro Truck Simulator 1 & 2, and American Truck Simulator. The catch here is that instead of travelling around parts of Europe or the United States, you’re delivering cargo in space around a planet. It’s essentially Space Truck Simulator, but it does do a lot to differentiate itself from the Truck Simulator games. Are these changes to the formular for the better or worse? Let’s have a look and find out!
The basic idea in Star Trucker is to transport cargo across the solar system. You start by picking up jobs from a job market at one of the many space stations around the system. Then you pick up your cargo from the bay it’s kept in, this is usually local to the station that issued the job. Finally, you transport your cargo across the system via jump gates that let you travel long distances extremely quickly. These work like hyperspace jumps in other sci-fi worlds, but they don’t send you into FTL speeds as the entire game is contained into one solar system.
Star Trucker has a wonderful aesthetic and that’s trucks in space. These are trucks, like we see today in the 2020’s, but retrofitted with rockets, maglocks, and so on. You even answer calls from your buddies on an old ham radio. It’s a style that I love. Like how the future in the Fallout series is based on the 1950’s, the future here is based on the early 21st century. The graphics are also far better than I expected from a game in this price range. It’s beautiful to look at. The solar system you explore also makes a lot of sense in terms of how it’s built up. There is a prison within one sector that’s isolated with almost nothing but security around making escape pretty much impossible. Another sector is filled with meteorites with mining equipment on them showing how this system gains its raw materials. If you pay attention to what you’re hauling and where to then you’ll find it makes a lot of sense. Science equipment will most often go to the science facilities within the ‘Enigma’ sectors while food or ingredients will go to the restaurants around Spark City. While there is very little lore I could find to this game, what is there seems to make sense. My only complaint about this world is that we’re not able to learn more about it.
The best part about Star Trucker’s gameplay is just how tactile everything in this game is. This really helps it feel more immersive than the Truck Simulator games in a lot of ways. If you want to activate your cruise control, then you need to click on the button on your dashboard rather than just pressing a button on your keyboard or controller. What really impressed me from the start was the ability to leave the driver’s seat. Your cab is a real space you can move around, and you will need to. Systems in the truck all work via computer chips, batteries, air filters, fuses, and so on. These will degrade over time or get damaged during collisions, electrical strikes while passing through static storms, or just burned when close to the sun. When this happens, you will need to get up and change the damaged equipment for a new piece. Sometimes a collision will cause a hull breech, or your engines overheat and burst into flames. When this happens, you must don your space suit and head out into the cold, dark, uncaring vacuum of space and repair the damage. You can also find salvage floating within destroyed or damaged remains of a ship or station. These can be collected and stored on the shelves within your cab. These are also useful for storing any spare equipment you’ve brought from the many shops around the system. You also must store your old broken equipment until you can sell it at one of these shops. This constant maintenance kept my truck feeling engaging. It also helped it feel more like something I wanted to look after and care for. This is an odd comparison, but it reminded me of the first Gran Turismo’s early game. Where each and every car felt personal and important to you. Similar to that game, this isn’t just a space truck, instead, it’s my space truck!
While this interactivity with your truck, cab, and the world around you is great there are some things I wish that the devs at Monster and Monster learned from the Truck Simulator series. For example, I miss the sleep system from those games. Having to manage how tired I was added a simulation detail that felt essential to the trucker vibes and its absence in Star Trucker is really felt. I also miss being able to manage my growing trucking empire as I started to buy more trucks and employ people to drive them for me. I feel like that company management gave the Truck Simulator games an endgame that was both fun to play and enticing enough to aim for. That’s missing with Star Trucker. You can level up and unlock more licences that allow you to travel to more places and haul more things but that’s it. In Star Trucker you truck so that you can truck more. In the Truck Simulator games you truck so that you can hire people to truck for you.
On top of these missing features there are the strange details that work with the trucker aesthetic but make no sense when moved into space. For example, why can I hear other truck’s honking their horns at me when I’m in the vacuum of space? Soundwaves need an atmosphere to travel through and cannot travel through a vacuum. Space is a vacuum. When you pay attention, you will notice more and more of these inaccuracies. Like how your engines erupt into flames when they overheat, there is no oxygen in space, meaning there should be no fire. When collecting salvage if you knock an object floating in space it will begin to float away in the direction you knocked it. This is great but then it will begin to slow down and stop spinning. It shouldn’t do this. There is no air resistance or friction in space to slow it down or to stop it spinning. These details just harm the immersion that this game is so good at building up.
Overall, this is a very impressive game offered at a price that’s beyond fair. I love this and I’m so glad I discovered it. If Monster and Monster were to make a sequel, which I hope they do, there are things to be improved upon. But as it is this is a fantastic game that allowed me to fulfil my dreams of being a space trucker. This has been a gaming highlight of 2023. If you’re into simulator games then this is, without a doubt, one of the best out there!
Recommendation Rating: 8 out of 10.
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