In 2024 a number of news articles emerged sharing snippets of an interview with a business owner claiming that certain manga and anime depictions had affected their reputation – though it appeared to be on the fringes of urban legend rather than fact, the story goes that truck manufacturers saw a decline in business thanks to the now infamous Isekai genre, in which our main character is killed in some dramatic fashion (usually a white truck) before being transported to another realm.
Though I can’t attest to the economic changes the genre might have brought about, the cultural zeitgeist was shifted forever, as white trucks no longer represented efficient industry but instead became a symbol of change. Very painful, 60-mile-per-hour change. Thankfully Strange Scaffold saw this new age approaching and decided that the world needed a game to go along with it, giving birth to the cultural phenomenon known as Truck-kun is Supporting Me from Another World?!.
Truck-kun (to which I will be shortening it for the sake of my word count) puts you in the shoes of a lowly delivery driver who promptly runs somebody over, sending them straight into a fantasy land filled with monsters, lich kings and cool armour. Through means which require a little bit of suspension of disbelief, you are able to communicate with the woman you have just involuntarily isekai’d who informs you that you are about to go on a righteous rampage to save her. Cue hours of running over civilians, destroying infrastructure and ramming the police off the road – such light-hearted fun!
As you can expect, the game doesn’t take itself too seriously – cutesy people fly about as the various benches and fences around you bounce comically into the air, aiding your unwitting companion as she slices her way through endless hordes of monsters – these creatures can only be summoned for the hero to fight every time you Isekai another civilian, with the rest of the environment contributing to an ultimate attack. There are pickups dotted around that can increase your time limit or give the hero a full attack bar, but they are better collected on the way rather than seeking them out.
As if this chaos weren’t already busy enough, you are still a delivery driver, so picking up parcels and dropping them off is also part of each run, but this tends to contribute more towards the various goals you need to complete to build up your final score. As your score goes up, you complete overarching goals related to story progress, but you also increase your notoriety – police become more aggressive in their attempts to bowl you off the road, although this is usually an inconvenience rather than a game over.
The first and biggest thing you will notice is that despite how simple the game is at its core, a lot is going on at once; each system is overlapping, and deliveries can put you on routes that might take you to an area where your objectives are easier to complete, but they might also take you away from perfect Isekai fodder that you need to keep your hero fighting fit – it’s a balancing act with plenty of parts, but some sit heavier on the scales than others.
As much as I enjoy the game at its core, it comes with some issues ranging from minor quibbles to major flaws; the most notable of these is that the gameplay loop simply doesn’t change much as you progress – challenges can get harder, and the increased police presence might prove to be a difficult step up from earlier runs, but most of your time will be spent performing the same loop of hit and run shenanigans before the timer runs out. Thankfully the game isn’t too long, so it certainly doesn’t overstay its welcome in this regard, but the performance is where it really falters.
I can’t speak to other platforms, but in terms of general performance the Nintendo Switch version of the game is fairly well optimised – frame drops and stuttering are almost never seen, but the biggest snags I have seen are in the snagging itself, as the physics for your car and the world around you are constantly at odds. A gentle kerb can cause your lorry to judder violently, whereas a set of stairs will either leave you feeling motion sick or stop you in your tracks entirely – you could probably argue that this is realistic, as anybody who has inadvertently clipped a kerb (or, in my case, whacked it at speed and flipped a Nissan Micra into a drystone wall) will tell you, but in a comical, cartoony game about intentionally Isekai-ing people to help a woman get to her first day of work on time, it can be jarring.
Does any of this mean the game isn’t worth playing? Absolutely not – for a game that costs a fraction of what some AAA games are charging, you get a goofy self-contained story, a well-rounded driving game, and replayable score-chasing action in a well-presented, colourful world – I have no doubt that fixes will come through to ease out any issues with performance over time, but for now if you can live with some shaky kerb-clipping, you’ll be in for a great time.
As an aside, developer Strange Scaffold has confirmed a ’Week 1’ patch which includes a garage for customising your truck, quality of life improvements and will also add controller mapping options, but more importantly, it features a “guns out” mode in which the hero has her buff arms on display. Never skip arm day, folks.
