Star Trucker Is A Unique Novice Friendly Take On The Truck Sim Genre

Star Trucker is a trucking sim with some survival elements thrown in. You won’t just have to make deliveries. You’ll need to actively look around to use buttons on your dashboard. Maintaining the ship also requires putting on a suit and going outside the truck. There isn’t much exploration though. There are zones and you’ll jump from one point to the other. Though you can take shortcuts instead of taking the “highway”.

Making a delivery isn’t simple though. Right from the beginning it can be more frustrating than fun. Backing up is where the controls feel like they fight the player most. Though you can maneuver around this since the truck has a full range of motion, including vertical. Damaged goods and late deliveries can drastically cut into profit. Making it hard to make money in the early game. Trading the salvage, you find, or depleted power cells can offset the losses. As long as you don’t end up in too much debt from losing oxygen.

Star Trucker has customizable difficulty scaling. But if you’d like the default experience, then expect to carefully watch your oxygen. And the space suit used for maintenance has to be charged fairly often. To conserve power you’ll often need to keep on the minimum amount of active systems possible. The systems aren’t complex, but still manage to keep you on your toes. Especially once you unlock fragile cargo and get into dangerous sectors. The environmental dangers can include solar flares that knock out power. You can use only your monitor to fly, or just wait out the storm at the risk of not meeting the delivery time.

Occasionally you’ll also get quests from NPCs, which offers some variety. Otherwise, the game is exactly what it says. That doesn’t mean the unexpected can’t happen. Beware of other drivers. Star Trucker will be frustrating when cores drain almost instantly, and the next moment wow you with its graphics. Running out of power can also leave you with a fine that eats up any money you’ve earned. It’s a fun game despite often feeling more like a management sim rather than a driving sim.