Review: Truckful
Make deliveries with your pickup truck along quiet roads, but roads full of mysteries.
THE GAME
Truckful is an adventure game developed by MythicOwl and published by MythicOwl and Pocketpair Publishing. While driving your pickup truck along a rural road, you stumble into an ancient forest with a mysterious atmosphere. There, you find a delivery woman and her broken-down vehicle on a road littered with abandoned cars. She asks for your help to get her to the nearby town to find someone to repair her truck. She also asks for help delivering the packages she was carrying so her customers aren't left stranded. You agree, and everything seems calm until a large truck suddenly appears and tries to attack your pickup. Desperate, you both flee the forest as quickly as possible, without understanding what happened. Now, you're more involved than you'd like, helping the delivery woman and the locals with deliveries while simultaneously unraveling the mysteries surrounding the ancient forest.
MY IMPRESSIONS
Truckful is a game that blends tranquil journeys through rural areas with escapes from a killer truck in the forest. It places you in the middle of a mystery as you make deliveries to the local residents. Right from the start, you realize something is wrong, both in the forest and with the characters who live there. Truckful skillfully uses its light art style to create an atmosphere where nothing is amiss, but through its use of color, the game effectively conveys its message. The characters are charismatic and full of personality. The game is in Brazilian Portuguese, helping the player follow the story and the directions given by the characters. The player is constantly torn between making deliveries as usual and trying to understand what's happening.
Making deliveries is very simple: you place the objects (or people) in the back of your pickup truck, always managing the limited space to ensure everything fits properly and avoid damage. The integrity of the deliveries is one of the factors that determines the success or failure of your work. Generally, you'll always have two objectives to complete on a delivery: the main one, which must be fulfilled, and a secondary one that will give you an extra medal. These objectives can vary, such as not damaging the cargo or reaching the destination by traveling a shorter distance than suggested. Driving your pickup truck is quite simple, but Truckful's more dynamic camera is there both to add charm to the game and to make your life more difficult, since you don't drive with the camera locked behind the pickup like in most games where you drive a vehicle. Don't worry, this additional camera difficulty isn't critical; it just makes the player more careful and creates a bit of a challenge, since the game is quite simple. Bumpy roads require you to not accelerate too much to avoid damaging the cargo. Animals on the road force you to stop and honk to get them to leave. These are just some of the difficulties encountered on your delivery routes. It's worth remembering that you can drive on more than just roads and streets. There are alternative routes and shortcuts that will save you time, but they can add difficulty. If you don't like these aspects of the game, you can play in story mode, where these delivery aspects are not taken into account and you can enjoy the story without difficulty. Amidst all this, you will eventually pass through the ancient forest, which will put you at risk of being pursued. Keeping your car updated is essential, as you can buy upgrades for it with the money earned from deliveries.
Truckful puts you in this adventure full of mystery with simple yet challenging gameplay. Going from one place to another making deliveries, discovering more about characters and the road itself, and being prompted to learn more and more is something Truckful does easily. It's a more casual game, but it will manage to hold the player's attention with its lightness, both in gameplay and visuals, even though it has moments of tension.
ACHIEVEMENTS
Truckful's achievements are quite varied, and you'll mostly get them while playing normally. Others, you might miss because you're very skilled, like destroying 50 fences, for example. Achievements related to pickup truck upgrades also exist, requiring you to purchase all of them, in addition to items for your collection. Completing all primary and secondary mission objectives also grants achievements, and these are perhaps the only ones that require a little more attention. Overall, they are simple achievements, even those that require more unusual skills. Getting 100% of Truckful's achievements will be a light task, as its gameplay suggests.
CONCLUSION
A lighthearted game with hints of mystery. Truckful constantly keeps you trying to understand what's happening in that region and how you can solve both the problems of the residents and the ancient forest. The gameplay is very satisfying and light, making it great to drive along the roads even with an unusual camera. And it had to be good, since you are your pickup truck and will spend the entire game controlling it. Even with the difficulties imposed in the missions, they won't be too insurmountable and ensure that the game isn't just a delivery simulator without any friction. Truckful is worth the experience, as it's a game at its own pace and with a cool story being told.
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