I am a big fan of games with experimental gameplay and concepts. I don’t mean the average shooter that has one or two distinctive mechanics like a grappling hook (though that’s a genre staple now, thank you Doom Eternal), I mean developers that have just straight up coding nightmare ideas to breathe life to. The highest concentration of such developers can be found among indie projects of course, where hundreds of ideas are churned out to the Steam gutter, either kickstarting a studio or remaining hidden gems for those bored by their endless game libraries to stumble on.
Finding the post-apocalyptic food truck sim advertised by its creator, CosmicDev, whilst randomly scrolling through Instagram was like finding an oasis in the barren desert of slop that is my for-you-page – and I was parched to the bone. It only being £8.50 is also just about as much as a vodka double in Edinburgh, so what do you know.
Advertised as a horror, it’s more the stressful type of scary you’d find in Five Nights at Freddy’s: managing multiple systems simultaneously, keeping the lights on and knowing when to shut the doors on less-than-human visitors. If you liked suffering through those kinds of games, you’ll feel right at home. The pizzeria is swapped out for a food truck driving through an atomic landscape, full of mutants and ghouls that surprisingly prefer actual cooking over living flesh, though many will ask for raw meat kebabs and a pack of cigs. Average diet of a In the case they ask for more complicated meals, you manoeuvre around the four corners of the room: that being the inviting customer desk, the driver’s/shish-maker seat, the pantry and what is probably the last working grill in the apocalypse.
Cooking itself is as simple as clicking the stove with your item and throwing the ingredients together in a bowl/toast/shish, the real difficulty is in correctly remembering the order as you get peppered by creatures that will make your culinary career hell. Depending on which location you are in (which there are a shockingly varied amount), wild dogs will try to tear the truck down, or a ghost will haunt your power system or Nosferatu will…flick the light switch off. He’s actually really annoying, but you can use up the money you earn from each shift (yes, these mutants have manners and pay) to buy some deterring garlic cloves from the wandering trader to hang up. He sells other much-needed upgrades like rat traps and extra ammo for your shotgun, in the event of unhappy customers.
By large though, the game’s rad art style, which makes me think of someone trying to graffiti their notebook drawings mixed with the typical minimalist blocky assets, does miles upon radioactive miles to keep the gameplay exciting – with each customer and creature having custom designs that reek of care in keeping that sweet spot between unnerving and funny. I was always looking to experience every side area that I could find just to see what kind of monster would flip the gameplay this time.
However, If I had any criticisms for the game, it’d be for the economy system. At the end of each day, depending on the number of successful orders, you get your pay. This at first, before you buy a hefty amount as a tip from a jar, is pocket change at best. This wouldn’t be a problem, if it wasn’t that if you want to change levels and progress the game, you must pay a flat 50$ for gas each time. This restriction leaves you with little money to spend on upgrades, not only blocking you from enjoying new mechanics but also making the mid-late portions of the game more difficult than they should be. I caught myself wondering if a stress-reducing item at the shop would’ve saved me on a failed attempt, but I couldn’t buy it without doing double-shifts at already explored locations, limiting the fun through backtracking. To the devs credit, he has tweaked the economy over and over again, but it does still feel more like a job at very specific parts than a job-simulator.
This is in no way a fault big enough to not recommend the game however, as the core of the game is great enough to offset any logistical issues. It’s the sort of easy to pick up but hard to master indie titles that I would recommend to anyone who wants to hone their reaction speeds and laugh as chaos erupts within minutes. I am eagerly awaiting the next time I get pulled out of rotting in my bed by a passion-project like this one, hopefully from CosmicDev himself should he get another heaven-sent idea.
