Review-in-Progress: Star Trucker

I told myself I wasn’t going to pick up any more games for coverage, and then the key for Star Trucker showed up. Whoops. It’s been one of my most anticipated games this year, alongside Uncle Chop’s Rocket Shop and Hollywood Animal. Too bad I can’t keep track of release dates.

So, I jammed Star Trucker into my schedule as best I could, but I was still unable to get to a point where I feel confident in fully reviewing it. It should be soon, though, so I’m going to be real quick with this.

Star Trucker (PC [Reviewed], Xbox Series X|S)
Developer: Monster and Monster
Publisher: Raw Fury
Released: September 3, 2024
MSRP: $24.99

Star Trucker is a game about trucking through the stars. Technically, portions of games like Elite and X4 involve space trucking, but Star Trucker is entirely about that life. To make up for the lack of space combat and mining, the star truck itself is very detailed. You can walk around its interior, organize your space supplies, and do maintenance. You’re not playing as the truck, but rather the eponymous Star Trucker.

Maintenance is very simple. You replace power cores whenever they get depleted, UCCs when they break, and air filters when you can’t breathe. If you hit space debris, it might punch holes in your truck, and you’ll need to spacewalk to fix it. It’s not super deep, but it’s a lot deeper than you commonly get in this genre.

You use this star truck to grab delivery jobs, pick up the cargo, and take it where it needs to go. There are varying types of cargo, and new hazards show up, but it’s largely point-to-point. However, there are jobs offered by NPCs that offer a bit more variety and contain what storyline Star Trucker has. There are also hazards like electrical storms and solar flairs that you need to protect yourself from. Aside from that, it’s what it says on the jar.

Star Trucker has a lot of visual polish, and the dev team seems to have had a strict plan for what they wanted to include and managed to prevent a lot of feature creep. It’s tight. I ran into some bugs with the pre-release version, but nothing too obstructive. One dude in a little forklift-like vehicle rammed me, which I didn’t appreciate. I appreciated less when someone rear-ended my truck while I was spacewalking, forcing me to fly all the way back to it. The little moments.

The game’s economy has given me some headaches. An air filter is, like, $3000 (if I recall accurately), and, at least into the game’s midpoint, most jobs pay considerably less than that. You have four spots for air filters, so good luck buying enough to fill them. Cores drain rather quickly, even when you have the highest quality. I’ve been able to maintain some level of profitability, so it isn’t completely unreasonable, but it can be vexing when you’re forced to keep jumping into your space suit because your air filter is bust and you can’t find a new one in the store.

I also refuse to take another “Just in Time” job. Those aren’t rush jobs, by the way. They have a threshold that you can’t deliver before, so the delivery can’t be completed early. There is no way to advance time in Star Trucker aside from jumping to a new region, and your truck continues to degrade all its cores and filters and UCCs while you sit there waiting. You can turn off some systems to conserve your parts, but I wouldn’t recommend switching off oxygen. I’m always early. I’m always left waiting on these jobs. Never again.

Star Trucker has been a reasonably good time so far. I’m about 14 hours in, but I want to try and complete some more story missions before I give a full report. I’m not expecting the narrative to get amazing, but later areas could potentially add some cool gameplay twists.

I will also get a bit more detailed in the full review, which I’m hoping to have done later this week. For now, it’s worth trying out. It takes some of the enjoyable parts of terrestrial trucking games, combines them with space simulators, and adds a bit of depth and character. I’ve enjoyed the time I’ve put into Star Trucker, but I still have to see how it performs on a long haul.