Imagine if the truck driving simulation Euro Truck Simulator and the space exploration classic Elite had a child together: It would probably look like Star Trucker. Because the British indie developer Monster and Monster had the bizarre idea of transporting a classic goods transport simulation into the middle of space. And far from any physical logic, in their game, fat driver’s cabins now float over marked space roads, dock at huge stations and travel through jump gates from one system to the next. Can that be fun? Yes, definitely! If you have the necessary stamina.
One supplier for an entire universe
The story of Star Trucker is quite spartan and is essentially limited to contact with virtual fellow drivers, with whom you communicate via an old-fashioned radio. At the same time, the game uses simple tutorial panels to explain the basics of the controls, which have some peculiarities due to the unusual setting.
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Star Trucker | REVIEW | From Trekker to Trucker
By completing all kinds of orders, which usually require you to transport cargo from A to B, you will receive both money and experience points. You invest the latter in your skill tree, which you use primarily to expand your licenses. Only then can you, for example, transport particularly fragile goods or store more weight in your truck.
Depending on which permits you get first, your colleagues will offer you the appropriate part-time jobs. The resulting campaigns gradually give you access to all five zones into which space is divided.
Regardless of this, you can head to one of the many stations and dock, for example to visit a shop or to accept a randomly generated run-of-the-mill freight order. The process is basically always the same: First, pick up the freight, fly over the jump gates to the target system and then drop off the goods at the location requested by the customer. Sounds simple? It basically is, if it weren’t for the “space” factor…
Quelle: PC Games
Control with feeling
First, you have to get used to the deliberately sluggish steering of the vehicle, which on the one hand allows you to float very smoothly through space, but on the other hand requires you to brake early in order not to rush past your destination.
First of all, the controls are anything but “realistic”: the developers have really made an effort to combine the described toughness with a good portion of accessibility. This is particularly noticeable in the vehicle’s high maneuverability, which makes it very easy to make all kinds of course corrections.
Docking at a station or coupling a load to be transported requires significantly more skill, which can only be done by carefully reversing. It’s good that there is a convenient rear-view camera as standard, which shows both the distance and the approach angle to the intended destination.
In summary: If you have the necessary patience and use all control nozzles for moving forward, backward or rotating in a controlled manner, you will quickly get the hang of handling it.
Quelle: PC Games
Lack of air
Instead, you have to deal with completely different problems and challenges most of the time, one of which the game reveals to you in the first few minutes of the game: If you collide with a station, a freight container or even another truck, for example, your truck will be damaged and, in the worst case, valuable oxygen will escape from your vehicle. In this case, you have to get away from the driver’s console as quickly as possible, get into your spacesuit and float into space through the roof hatch to repair the damage from the outside.
As soon as you put on the suit, you will notice two displays: one represents the oxygen supply, which is slowly but surely decreasing. The other symbolizes the energy you need for the welding machine and thus for the repair. If one of the two is used up, you have to go back to the truck and take off the suit again to recharge it. But this only works if the energy cell connected to the system still has enough juice. If this is not the case, the old energy cell has to be removed and a new one inserted.
In total, your truck is powered by seven such energy cells: two for vehicle control, two for docking at stations or docking of
Cargo, one for the gravity system, one for the air supply and one for charging the spacesuit. Depending on which energy cell is responsible for which system, it loses more or less energy as consumption increases. While controlling the vehicle and docking can be done with one energy cell each if necessary, survival in space becomes much more critical if the air supply fails.
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So pay close attention to the corresponding display, which you can see at any time on the dashboard of your vehicle: if the pointer turns to the left and reaches zero, everything will go black and you will automatically be picked up by some kind of rescue service. This, in turn, costs a lot of money, you will most likely end up in another system and your actual problem – the empty energy cell of the air supply – is still not solved.
