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Ever since Dredge showed up on the scene, we’ve seen a lot of games like that pair up simple delivery tasks, exploring ominous spaces, and the hints of otherworldly danger and supernatural elements follow. This led to developers taking that type of adventure on the road, which we saw with Easy Delivery Co. Now there’s MythicOwl’s take on it with Truckful, which feels like an exploration of urban legends and an omnious forest with some also colorful areas and Snuggle Truck style, physics-based driving. It is interesting and the balance between lighter moments and hidden horrors is handled well, but I’m not a fan of how some of the physics-based elements and map breaks work.
Truckful begins with us driving through a forest toward Deepstone Valley and happening upon a woman named Rutti. She’s a courier who found herself stuck after her delivery van died in the forest. She still needs to get her packages where they’re going, and prevails upon you to help. Once you start the drive though, things immediately take a turn for the worse. You know how there can be malevolent ghost ships at sea? Well, the two encounter the big rig truck equivalent of that in an especially dark and eerie part of the forest. They make it through and even reach Granny’s garage where our truck can be repaired, but Granny says the forest’s taken that van now and pretty much explains everyone in the valley is stuck staying in there. By making more deliveries and exploring the area, you’ll start to understand more about what’s going on.
While Truckful can be a more punishing and dangerous experience on normal, there is that and a “story” difficulty that is a little more generous about difficulty so someone can take in the experience and enjoy the story. Now, it can still be pretty difficult sometimes, but it’s less taxing. Difficulty honestly comes down to the physics-part of driving, rather than the unsettling encounters. Especially since it isn’t difficult to earn money for car upgrades. But there is still a slight stress that comes from those occasional anxiety-inducing situations.
The feedback loop is fairly simple. Truckful is essentially a series of fetch quests. You get deliveries in Deepstone Valley. You take the items from one place to another. Main roads are available, but it is also possible to go off the beaten path and explore. There can be obstacles, like animals and barricades, turns and hills that require more care, and road hazards like water or broken concrete. While we do tend to see things from a third-person, almost isometric sort of view from above, it can sometimes feel like going through isolated levels. Also, there is a map, but the navigator function we acquire at the first garage puts an omnipresent arrow on screen that sort of nudges us in the region direction so you don’t need to constantly check the map or pay attention to the road signs. You can do this! Those will also help. But it isn’t required.
Once you get an order, you arrange things in the bed of your truck. You start with 2×2, but can pay for upgrades to expand that space once you start making deliveries. Other sorts of upgrades also exist like runes for alerts, a horn to warn animals out of the way, reinforcements for higher stacking, better tires and suspension for handling, improved steering for manueverability, and an engine to increase your speed. This allows you to take on better jobs when you do upgrade, which lets you tackle greater challenges and missions, and so on. It’s very cyclical. Can it get a little tedious? Eventually! Especially if you’re playing in large, multi-hour bursts. But I didn’t find it to be as much of an issue as other elements.
The execution of some gameplay elements is where Truckful issues can come up. It’s great if you take a few missions in a row, mostly. However, you aren’t going continuously down one unbroken map. There are constant breaks that involve exiting one “area” or “portion,” then loading up into another, and these always tend to be a lot smaller than I expected. While I do get the need for it in some cases, as we definitely see the truck headed into forested spaces, quieter spots, and residential locations that would need that distinction, it happens even when going from one wooded area to another. This also essentially spoils you for spooky spots too, since you get an idea of when those horrors might happen due to the change in atmosphere. (Though, again, I get the distinction since it does basically give you a quick save safe spot before and after that occurs.) Going into and out of areas so frequently ruins the immersion.
I also don’t know if it was due to the at-launch build of Truckful, but I noticed even if I upgraded my tires and suspension, there would be times the physics system would knock things around and out of my truck even when I was being cautious. Like I’d take turns and hills at lower speeds and be gentle around obviously damaged roads or puddles when I was in obviously safe spots. Even so, sometimes I’d see packages fall out for seemingly no real reason. Oddly enough, that didn’t really present itself as an issue when the murder-truck was barreling down on me.
Truckful a game you can easily group in with titles like Dredge and Easy Delivery Co, though it relies more on physics-based safe driving. I do wish MythicOwl didn’t break up the immersion so much with the way it handles the map. And I think perhaps it was a bug, but sometimes even on story mode the physics system seemed determined to eject my packages even when driving slowly. But the idea is still pretty fun, and it’s easy to drive around Deepstone Valley to complete jobs or even just explore.
Truckful is available on PCs via Steam.
