Star Trucker Is More Than Euro Truck In Space, And It Is Playable On Steam Deck - Gamescom 2024

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At Gamescom, I got a chance to meet with and speak to some of the awesome people at Raw Fury and try out two of their upcoming games. I loved them both for very different reasons, but I was very excited to see a bit more about Star Trucker. At first glance, and trying it for myself, it initially felt like Euro Truck Simulator 2, but in Space, and in some cases, it was, but as I played, it really started to gain its own identity in ways I didn't expect.

In my 30-minute demo, I got to sit down and play the opening of the game. At first, I was a bit confused, but then I realized that I could actually interact with the inside of the truck! It starts you off by teaching you how to get out of your seat, which includes putting on your suit and going outside the truck to repair it. You have full 360 degrees of movement, as you would expect in space, and feel just as floaty as you'd expect. Once you get back in, you gotta get back to your seat and start trucking away.

Truck driving is also similar to floating around in space. You can move your car left and right, up and down, and accelerate forward or break/reverse back. It feels very floaty and authentic to being in space, which I love. There's a lot of planning involved as well since you have to break and accelerate while anticipating how fast or slow you need to go to make sure you don't go too far from your delivery point. Once you get there, you stop and let your haul go. Then, it's off to the shipping station to get a new delivery.

Star Trucker is very standard and what I expected for the gameplay loop, but there are a couple of little things added that I felt made a big difference. I love the interactions with your truck. Getting up out of your seat, manually pulling levers to disengage with your haul or warp jump, selecting the ham radio and having to press the right trigger to speak to other truckers on the line, and getting up to repair your truck are all great examples of this.

You can also gather and trade items to get extra currency to use for upgrades and paint jobs. Each area has its own shop, which has different items that sell more or less, as well as a black market with items that are banned. If you try transporting these items, you could get caught, so you have to hide them in your ship. This is something you need to do manually, and upgrading your truck can give you hidden panels to store illicit items to sell, which is awesome.

I do have a gear that the currency you get will lose its usefulness once your truck is upgraded, but I do know the team is exploring other ways to make currency useful. While nothing is set in stone, it would be cool to see them give us a space station to invest in or something along those lines to keep us spending the money!

With the game now being released, we can also say it is playable on the Steam Deck, but just barely. Even on the low settings, it just barely gets above 30 for almost the entire time. You can reduce the render percentage and get a better framerate, but I felt it was too blurry. For now, I recommend playing at 30 FPS with medium quality settings to get the most out of the visuals and have a solid experience.

Star Trucker is available now on Steam for $22.49 (10% off sale until September 17th) and while it doesn't have a rating, it does have controller support and will hopefully receive Steam Deck enhancements down the line.

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