Truck-kun is Supporting Me from Another World?! Review

Video games don’t have to make sense, but they should be fun, and Truck-kun is Supporting Me from Another World?! has that in spades. The next game from Strange Scaffold continues the lineage of quirky, oddball games that you can’t put down. Following the internet meme about the trope, Truck-kun embraces the silly and never lets go. I only wish the game did more with its world and gameplay than what it does, as the end result is feeling anemic and not fully fleshed out.

The game starts with you as The Driver, a delivery driver out to make deliveries as part of his day-to-day job, but accidentally runs over Carissa. You see, she was on her way to an interview for marketing job that she was absolutely going to nail. Instead, she is sent to another world and becomes a buff elf that communes with you in your head, and must be rescued and resurrected from whence she was transported to. It’s a humorous premise that follows the aforementioned trope to a tee. There are specific story points as you reach certain checkpoints where the story progress and the two of them will banter and work together. The relationship between the two never has enough time to bloom, but it’s all entertaining enough.

The game lasts just long enough to tell the story it wants to, albeit with very repetitive gameplay and structure. All-in-all, I completed the game in four hours and acquired 100% of the achievements. It’s not a long game, but it is a good time while it lasts. It’s straightforward in design and presentation, but the town of Wenvale is small but mighty, boasting docks, construction, suburbs, city streets, and even a beach. You’ll be driving all over the town at the behest of Carissa who convinces you to run over pedestrians that sends them to another world (safely, somehow). The end goal is to obtain the scroll of resurrection from the Skeleton King, but you have to help Carissa become strong enough to take him on.

In a lot of ways this is Crazy Taxi meets The Simpsons: Road Rage, with any other amalgamation you could fit in. There’s Mario Kart style drifting here, so you’ll hold to charge to blue for a small boost, or hold longer to turn pink for a large boost. As you wreak havoc, you’ll get the attention of the cops and have a rising heat level. The heat with the cops goes up to five, and they are very easy to dismiss with a simple sideswipe at the press of a button. They will often do a lot to mess up a challenge you’re working towards.

When things are calm, you can drive around doing more simple tasks. You can, and should do actual deliveries as part of your job still. However, the rewards of doing so net you a star, as doing some of the other challenges. However, completing deliveries is easily the most frustrating part of the game. For whatever reason, trying to stop is like stopping on a oil-slicked road covered in baby oil and your wheels are ice blocks. When the game is in motion and you’re drifting, boosting, destroying everything in sight is great, but the times where deliveries are tasked upon you, is the killer of all fun. Thankfully making deliveries is not a massive part of the game, it’s just something you’ll want to engage with the least.

The game’s progress is gated by reaching certain milestones like completing certain number of challenges, such as running over pedestrians, acquiring a number of stars, smashing billboards, and the like. As you collect stars and complete challenges, the story is allowed to progress. There’s a neat system whereby completing challenges will either reward you with stars, or time. Time is accumulated each time you partake in a run, or outings as the game calls them. There’s no fail states, so you’re free to experiment, play how you want, or goal chase as you desire. Though no matter how good you end up being, your outings are capped to 10 minutes. I presume this is to pace your progression so that you get through the story in a certain cadence.

In the game’s main menu, you can somewhat see what milestones you’ve done and which ones are in-progress, but you can’t view them in detail. There’s simply no stats screen to show how close or far you are from an achievement or something. There’s a free roam mode that eschews all timers, goals, and police, but I don’t find the driving or the world worth exploring without those systems guiding me. There’s a placeholder for a garage, which within the first week will allow you to change skins based on progress you’ve made, but for now is grayed out. Lastly, you can replay the tutorial if certain systems evade you, or experience the finale as that version of the world is only experienced there.

The game doesn’t have many graphical options, but it ran flawlessly on Linux through Proton and I was able to achieve my monitor’s refresh rate of 180fps. I imagine this’ll be a great game on Steam Deck or a similar handheld.

Truck-kun is Supporting Me from Another World?! is a neat palate cleanser, but it’s decidedly short and not something you’ll be itching to play through again right away. While there’s measures to gate progression, I suspect there might be ways to get around that and would be a cool to see speedran at Games Done Quick. I love short experiences, but I think there’s so much more to do here that it ends up being full of missed opportunities. Even though this is built on the back of a meme and trope, Truck-kun is Supporting Me from Another World?! is certainly a fun romp for the several hours it lasts.