Star Trucker | Review

10-4 Good Star Buddy

Jesse 'Doncabesa' Norris September 3, 2024Last Updated: September 8, 2024

0 5 minutes read

Star Trucker is the dream mash-up of long-haulin and flying machine maintenance simulator that the world has been begging for. You are Lucky-J, and you’ll be hauling cargo all over the galaxy to earn some cash, and maybe even solve a few mysteries. A day-one launch on Game Pass for Cloud, Console, and PC makes this one a no-brainer for those looking to live their lorry-est life in the stars. It ain’t all blinding sunshine and cold depth daisies, but it’s awright I suppose.

Long Haulin

Star Trucker starts you off with a solid tutorial if you so wish, or you can dive headfirst into the hauling life that’s as easy or difficult as you want. You are flying a space truck through a small galaxy full of floating garbage. You’ll find space roads that are clean but have traffic and speed limits to contend with. It’s always a fight to stay alive in the cold depths, as your batteries will drain, filters will get used up, and gas will run out. At its base difficult Star Trucker is a never-ending balancing act of keeping your packages safe, delivering them on time, and making sure your Truck Ship keeps working.

There are several main quests in the game that you will want to focus on for a while, as they open up the game’s various mechanics. You have your basic deliveries, ones that have strict timers, precious and fragile cargo, and it all feels really damned good to fly around. Star Trucker is a mix of an earth-bound truck delivery sim and something like Elite Dangerous. You have various battery banks, filters, CPU terminals, and more on your ship that must be maintained. If you hit an object you’ll get a hole in your hull that requires you to spacewalk and repair. Even that system has a battery and CPU that can run out if you use it too often.

I found normal difficulty to be a great balance of relaxing drives while still having to focus on proper maintenance. There are various difficulties from easy to I hate myself, but I chose custom for this review. I wanted to see as much of the game as possible so I made a few of the game’s more overbearing systems (I’m looking at you, batteries) and made it a touch easier. Let’s get into each system you must maintain and how it all works.

Systems Upon Systems

The main system you’ll interact with is your thrusters. You’re flying through space so you have three sets of thrusts that move you back and forth, up and down, and spin your cab to level things off. The controls feel great, with just enough momentum to let things get out of control if you mess up but not so much that turning is a real pain. For the hardcore, you can turn off the driving assist and let things go coo-coo loco if you want as well. Alongside your thrusters you have an air brake for when you need to stop A.S.A.P. Docking is handled with a rearview camera that allows to you line up the back of your truck to enter stores where you can buy parts, paint jobs, or get new jobs. The backing-up system feels great as the controls are inverted so while up means down and down means up while looking ahead it’s all “correct” when you’re looking behind.

Whenever you need to fix up your truck or change out batteries/CPUs you look at your seat and press A. You then get full FPS controls and there is an FOV slider for those who can get motion-sick with too low of a field of view. The aim acceleration on the stick felt better than most indie shooter titles and getting around your cabin or spacewalking to patch up holes on the ship is a breeze. Those holes come from any collision you make and depending on the path you choose you’ll have to avoid other vehicles and a lot of floating junk. A straight line will only be the fastest way if you manage to not hit anything, as losing oxygen from holes in your ship will tear through battery and air filter durability. If you ever pass out from a lack of o2 then you’re looking at a hefty rescue bill as well. You can go into debt though it’s really hard to work your way out if you aren’t patient.

The game slowly introduces a large number of new systems, most of them tied to the later areas you can explore. An early one is a shutter system that allows you to visit the more volatile star systems, where extreme weather can fry or freeze the inside of your cab. Driving with the shutter down is a trip, as you need to rely on your cameras to see anything if you stay in a first-person view. The game does offer up various camera angles but I never used them as the first-person perspective was the most immersive.

Lookin Good, Pardner

Space Trucker is a damned pretty game. Your starting truck may look a bit hideous but don’t fret. You’ll unlock new paint jobs in no time, and the views, whooweee are they gorgeous. With dozens of locations to visit, I was in love with the game’s take on a space-bound trucking society. The planets, nebulas, and stars around you, as you traverse these star roads, looked great on both Xbox and PC at max settings. The game is always running at a high frame rate though there was no HDR available on console during the review period.

My main issue with the game is the writing and voice acting. It’s not major as it doesn’t come up nearly as often later on but when there is talking it’s not my cup o’ tea. Lots of Southern US trucker jargon is thrown around and as the kids would say it could be a bit cringe. It wasn’t terrible, and I appreciate the effort the voice actors gave. I just wish I could have skipped it more easily when things were going long in the tooth (I’m looking at you trivia game over the CB radio). The radio itself, along with the various systems in the truck is neat. You have to look up and grab the CB radio so you can reply to others and you get a few lines to choose from. There is also an in-game radio that you can turn on and off, and it’s full-on country music that I was not into.

I didn’t run into any major bugs while playing, and the play-anywhere functionality of the title worked perfectly. I jumped between the Xbox and Microsoft Store versions with no issues as long as you give 15 seconds or so for the save files to sync up. Quick Resume worked perfectly as well, which makes sense as the game has seemingly no online functionality.

Wrapping Things Up

Star Trucker can be as relaxing or sweaty as you like. While the main story’s writing wasn’t the best it was more than made up for by how solid the rest of the title is. It looks great, feels damned good to play, and I could see it easily becoming a new go-to podcast game for millions of Game Pass players.