Review: Star Trucker

I’ve been space trucking since I was a teenager and discovered Elite 2: Frontier and Frontier: First Encounters. Later, it was Freelancer. Somewhere along the line, I lost the love of moving freight through the vacuous unknown. That was, until Star Trucker.

Often, the actual delivery portion of any given space game is optional. There’s usually piracy, combat, maybe mining. There are lots of ways to make a buck in the endless expanse of the universe. Star Trucker, on the other hand, is entirely about trucking through the stars. It’s more than just pressing the pedal down; but all its additional features are in service of your delivery.

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

Star Trucker starts you off broken down at the side of the, er, road. One of the very first things you do is put on a space suit and eject from your cab to patch holes in your truck. More than anything, the biggest challenge you’ll face in the cold expanses of the universe is maintaining your vehicle.

One thing that Star Trucker is not is Euro Truck Simulator 2. While it can be relaxing, you won’t find any room for meditation, as controlling your vehicle isn’t as simple as turning on cruise control and keeping it between the lines (though, there is cruise control if you want it). It leans to strike a balance between realism and fun, which means the physics take into account the zero-G environment. You have to ensure there is air in your cab and that the interior isn’t being overwhelmed by the temperature of the exterior.

Most of the functions of your truck are tied to a battery or UCC. You have to change out the batteries when they deplete and swap out the UCCs when they fry. On top of that, there are air filters that need to be routinely changed. Also, you need to make sure your gas tank is topped up, and the hull isn’t full of holes. It can get stressful, and I bring this up early because I want you to know what Star Trucker is, because it may not be what you’re expecting.

The money you make from the freight you run is probably going to go right back into your truck. Batteries are expensive, and air filters are ridiculous. You won’t be able to just take dangerous jobs, show off your mad skills, amass a pile of wealth, and pile your cab full of supplies. It’s almost unavoidable you’ll always be struggling to keep the gravity on. At least on the recommended difficulty setting.

This is going to be a sticking point for a lot of folks and is likely, to some degree, a balancing issue. While I prefer it when a game keeps you under pressure for its runtime, it could get annoying. Air filters will become the bane of your existence because they cost about as much as a mid-complexity, long-range drive. That’s if you can get them.

Prices on all goods fluctuate as a way of enabling you to run additional commodities and make money on the side. This also affects batteries and air filters. Sometimes, you’ll limp your way into a market and find that air filters are priced up 25% and out of your budget. That’s if you can find them at all, because they’re sometimes just not in stock. In my experience, it’s when you need them most that they’re out of stock.

I had moments where I was swapping in and out of my space suit to make the most of the remaining oxygen-generating power of my life support system. Other times, I had to choose between replacing the gravity core or oxygen. As I mentioned, I prefer it when a game never loses its effectiveness in keeping me under pressure, but it was starting to get frustrating.

Another advantage to its miserly manipulation of commodities is the way it forces you to become intimate with your truck’s functions. You can, for example, shut off the lights inside your cab to preserve power. You can reduce the heat in systems with reasonable temperatures in order to further reduce consumption. Had penny-pinching not been a necessity, I may never have played with the dials on the dashboard.

On the other hand, beyond keeping your truck in running order, there are upgrades and cosmetic options you can buy. However, the cosmetics are so expensive I never bought a single one. And I can’t imagine why. They go up past $10,000. And none are better than the other, so the price range is a real head-scratcher. I never bought a cosmetic. Painting your truck is cheaper and has a more visible effect, so why would I spend good air filter money on a hood ornament?

The upgrades also don’t seem to make a whole lot of measurable difference. Your fuel gauge will predict how many KM (or miles, if you’re into that sort of thing) you’ll get out of your tank, but I noted that I could get 93km on a full tank, and when I upgrade the fuel efficiency, I could get… 93km. I don’t know if that’s an accurate measurement – it’s hard to gauge the distance you’ve traveled in space – but you’d think I’d be able to see the difference.

There’s a main questline to go through, which is a neat addition. There’s a selection of truckers who all want your help and will provide you with upgrades as you proceed. There’s actually a decent amount of diversity in the missions. One has you rip a reactor out of a space colony before it goes critical. Another has you picking up discarded cargo. The story isn’t anything I’d consider special, but it’s more than I would expect from a game about space freight.

My only issue with the story missions is that, while they’re necessary for progression, they don’t provide any monetary reward. You have to take a break from trying to scrape together air filter funds to actually take part of the main quest, because they won’t pay you. You do eventually get items that are necessary to progress further in the game, but these feel like milestones, not rewards. It leaves normal story missions feeling thankless. Screw these other truckers, they can’t even spare an air filter?

I also want to note that all hauling is done through little nodes. You can cruise to a jump gate and then jump through to the next node, complete with an extravagant little hyperdrive process. Some of the areas have suggested highways that you can take for safety purposes. You can go “off-road” if you want, but there are often debris fields. You can avoid the little pieces of space junk with some careful driving, but it’s likely to slow you down. Cleverly, it’s a bit like actual off-road driving.

I know that this is all sounding negative, but I actually really enjoyed Star Trucker. While I ran into some bugs, and maybe the balance isn’t entirely where it should be, I think the team at Monster and Monster did a good job of taking a big, detailed concept and fitting it into a game without much bloat.

Despite that – or maybe because of it – I do have things I wish were included in the game. For example, while the game’s philosophy seems to involve playing as a person instead of just a truck, your person doesn’t have any needs. You don’t have to sleep, despite there being a bed in the cab, and it would have been really useful for passing time on deliveries that needed to be within a specific timeframe. I also would have loved to walk around in space stations and enjoy a delicious space burger in a space diner, but I understand that space dining is a much more massive time investment than it sounds.

I also wish there was more to repair work than just swapping out batteries and air filters. Fixing fuel leaks or replacing the space brakes. I kind of get the feeling that something like that may have been in the design document but they ran out of time to implement it, but that’s just speculation.

As it stands, I thought Star Trucker was a good time. Not an ideal time, and I don’t think it will be everyone’s cup of Space Joe, but I think it does what it sets out to do. The creators had a vision they wanted to achieve, and I think they hit near enough to the mark to call it a success. As long as you know what you’re getting into, it’s a worthwhile experience. It might occasionally grind your gears, but it’s a breath of fresh air with the right filters.

_{[This review is based on a retail build of the game provided by the publisher.]}