Star Trucker

this game isnt even worth your money on sale. i stopped playing a year ago due to game breaking bugs. picked it back up 2 days ago and the bugs are STILL THERE. oh but the devs had time to pump out some f*ckin cosmetic dlcs. sweet. some common issues ive run in to: -cargo that is too long for the delivery bay -warping into and out of 'haze way', especially using the new aspen gate will end up with your cargo and usually truck being totalled 100% of the time, this is due to the devs allowing for terrain objects to affect the truck in the system load/warp bubble screen. awesome, well done guys, an entire map that must be completely avoided not because of difficulty but because of r*tardation and spaghetti code. -if one of the 'side jobs' comes up while youre doing a delivery the GPS defaults to bringing you to the side job -the GPS will ALWAYS take routes that frankly make 0 sense. 10 jumps to avoid a $150 toll? no problem. an 8 jump course instead of a 4 jump one? obviously! this was done to drag out gameplay by the devs -the 'side job' characters are a cavalcade of the simultaneously most dry, unenthusiastic and hammed up performances ive ever heard. with the most tenuous adventure hooks ever (apparently none of these shlubs can do anything for themselves, including preparing a gift FOR THE PLAYER CHARACTER, THATS RIGHT FOLKS YOU HAVE TO HAUL AND PREPARE A FIREWORK DISPLAY INTENDED FOR YOU, THE PLAYER, thats literally the lore reason, its not for a nearby hab deck or anything its a gift for you, and you need to do it yourself) -the alleged 'side jobs' are mandatory for progression. THERE IS NO WAY TO PROGRESS YOUR CAREER BY SIMPLY HAULING AND LEVELING UP AND BUYING UPGRADES YOU NEED TO DO ALL THE FRIEND MISSIONS TO UNLOCK THE WHOLE MAP (honestly, theyre not friends, theyre f*ckin parasites, if people used me the way these people use the PC with nothing gotten in return id probably never speak to them again, in fact even more insultingly they GROSSLY underpay you when they DO pay) honestly the game breaking bugs in a game thats been out for over a year are the big reason to not buy, especially paired with cosmetic dlc when the player base (all ten of them) have been all but begging for VR, Joystick/Wheel control and some form of Co-Op since day 1. this is not only how you kill a potential franchise, this is how you kill a company, but alas theyll just keep pumping out half baked cookie after half baked cookie and people will keep gobbling it up and wondering why they have salmonella. and honestly its kind of upsetting cuz i want to enjoy this so bad, at its core i really do, but its really hard to love something that keeps slapping you in the face every hour just for interacting with it.

This game is very focused on its vision, which is driving an American semi-trailer truck in space. I think because it is so laser-focused on providing this specific experience, the game is arbitrarily limited by itself. Your truck is the main character and you are stuck with it the entire game. You can upgrade it, but there aren't different models you can get or anything like that. It moves very sluggish, does not have vertical or lateral thrusters so positioning can be very tricky since you are in a 3D space. Visibility in the truck is very poor, the entire bottom half of the screen is always obstructed by the hood of your truck. There is no 3D radar to show relative position of objects around you. Again, you're stuck with this the entire game. It really wants you to feel like you're driving the space version of a big, sluggish semi truck. The survival elements are honestly the coolest part of Star Trucker for me, but on default difficulty starting out it can feel oppressive, especially if you have issues with collisions (with the lack of visibility, you will). Your truck/ship consists of several systems running at the same time (Gravity, Suit power, Mag lock, Core functions, Air filtering) and you have to maintain the parts to keep these systems running. You will be purchasing lots of batteries to keep them powered and selling off used batteries, because there is no battery "recharging" in the game. Rechargeable batteries do not exist in this game where people have colonized multiple systems in space. There are also circuit boards that can degrade over time and need to be replaced, so just checking battery levels does not ensure everything will keep running smoothly. Whenever you collide with an object, depending on your overall hull integrity, there is a chance you can get a hull breach on your truck/ship which then you'll need to park in the middle of space, walk to the back of your cabin and suit up, eject out the airlock and repair your ship from the outside. I actually love this, I think this is awesome. I also think it's funny that your suit has both vertical and lateral thrusters - the technology exists in this universe, but for some reason it's not on the vehicles. Or maybe just your vehicle, that you're stuck with the whole game. I don't think this is a bad game, but coming from my background of playing Truck Simulator games and stuff like Freelancer or Elite Dangerous, I can't recommend this over those. I could only recommend this game to someone who specifically wanted a game where you fly a literal truck through space.

there is no real flying around. You go from jump gate to the marked area and thats about it. in five minutes you go go from accept load to cargo delivered. I expected flying through space from star to star like a star trucker. It did not deliver.

Sadly, the game really does not hook me up. As other reviews have stated, there are many core issues : - No lateral thrusters, for a game in space, is really frustrating. I get that it probably comes from the idea that this is a 'Truck game', but it just doesn't sit right with me. - I think I'd like to have the option to bind the rotation to the mouse, instead of WASD, spacebar to go forward feels REALLY weird. - My main issue, this is a 'Truck game', but you don't ever drive, you just warp between zones constantly. What's kind of weird, is that the game feels polished, the world coherent and alive. But it feels like it sprouted from an idea, and was developped head down with no planning. The universe looks so cool, but the very core of the game loop just isn't satisfying, ETS2 is great because you drive your truck from point A to point B, this just isn't that. Probably a lot of potential, but I don't think it will ever live up to it, as it would require a massive overhaul of its most centric system.

You see trucks with multiple trailers everywhere, then i come to find out even when you unlock the upgrades for multiple trailers, you cant manually hook up trailers from different missions. i had 2 missions that i accepted where one trailer drop was on the way to the other, i was thinking i should be able to collect both trailers and do both missions in one run but its not possible. Honestly killed the game for me, it was already pretty boring, if i was still in the refund window i would've refunded.

TLDR: The name Star Trucker might make it sound like some borderlands-esque fast paced space truck adventure, but the gameplay ends up more like A Space Trucking Simulator. I enjoy it personally, but it's probably only going to appeal to a narrow range of people. You can customize the gameplay a huge amount through various modes, but the core gameplay is more like a slow paced vehicle sim rather than the rowdy space truck adventure you might be expecting. The biggest criticism I have is that there's a lot of repetitive manual busywork in maintaining the truck. You have to constantly buy new parts and are forced to manually replace them every single time they wear out. Even the various vehicle service stations have no option to do this maintenance automatically at any price, no matter how much money you make, which doesn't really make any sense. It starts to feel like deliberate time wasting to slow the player down, in an attempt to offset the other big issue the game has. That being that this game doesn't simulate space very well. It's nothing more than a series of locations connected by jump gates. Absolutely all long range travel and time management is done through warp gates, with each one having a time cost you have to keep in mind as you plan jumps to make your delivery on time. I don't find that gameplay unenjoyable, but there's never really a feeling of wide open roads or vast sections of space anywhere. It's all just little clusters of space stations, some less or more populated and hazardous than others. Definitely a game that might have a barrier to entry for some, as it takes a little practice to avoid ending up a wreck on the space highway somewhere. If you're used to vehicle sims, it's pretty mild. Even then the busywork might put you off, but again there's options to vastly adjust and completely add/remove many of these mechanics to customize the game to your liking. I've enjoyed my time with it so far, your mileage may vary.

Soooo… I'm left with another game I wish had a 'neutral' recommendation. Star Trucker has a lot of charm, personality and good ideas that make me really [b]really[/b] want to recommend it but its got [i]soooo many[/i] little issues that kept dragging me out of the experience that I ultimately hit a point where I just couldn't keep going. The positives of the game are quite enjoyable and, even with all the issues I'm about to mention, it still may well be worth grabbing it on a discount to give it a try and enjoy for a dozen hours or so. Sound design is great, the atmospheres are really pretty, the job variety isn’t amazing but it’s a trucker game and fits well for the most part. I do wish there was more ambient music other than just the radio; if you keep the radio off, the game will occasionally play short little spurts of really nice Eve Online like ambient music which was very nice. Story missions are nothing to write home about but they give a variety of monotony breaking things to do whenever you're feeling up to it. Unfortunately, the problems started pretty early. So long as you play the game like a simulator game, take your time and drive like you actually want to survive, you can overcome most of the challenge of the game within 2-4 hours. Do a couple missions for decent pay, replace all the basic equipment you have with + or ++ variants and you can ignore the majority of your instrument panel for another 4 hours. On 3 separate occasions I ran into a bug where activating a warp gate caused my rig and cargo hull to take 100% damage. Unfortunately, the game auto-saves [i]after[/i] you arrive on the far side of the gate so I just had to eat it the $5-9000 loss each time. Was incredibly frustrating to do a long haul and, 1 jump away in a 5-jump delivery, go from a +$8000 job to a -$3000 job through no fault of my own. I got to the point where I just tried to remember to manually save before every jump just in case. The game has a skill tree with two node types: primary nodes that unlock different types of jobs and secondary nodes that give you small perks like longer EVA time, cab carrying capacity and the ability to do jobs with multiple trailers. With that last one you'd probably think '[i]cool, I get that perk and I can take on multiple jobs, haul them at the same time and be more efficient[/i]', the game even unlocks the ability to take multiple jobs right around that point too! Nope, you can [b]never[/b] hitch cargo from different jobs together. If you read the description of the skill, it [i]does[/i] specifically say you get 'clearance for jobs with multiple trailers' but its not at all clear you can't create your own jobs with multiple trailers. If it were a primary, job-unlocking type of node, at least that would have made a little more sense but it took making another $6000 mistake and a web search to figure it out. The game has 2 driving modes: assist and manual. Assist is basically required if you want to be able to play the game but adds a drift friction for some reason so, when you release the throttle, you slow down. You can turn off the 'driver assist' function which turns off friction but also makes the rig virtually uncontrollable. I would have much preferred not to have to be constantly using cruse control to maintain a reasonable speed. And there are many, many more little nits that picked at me the whole time (no cargo straps so your stuff is constantly being thrown around, cab cargo weight limit for some reason in zero-G, rig upgrade durability suddenly going from 100 to 0%, occasionally being fined for 'reckless driving' even though I have no idea what constitutes reckless driving, being unable to pull up the map when trying to decide which job to take, solar zones being absolutely atrocious to pass through, getting a traffic violation fine when someone runs into ME as I'm backing into a docking port, etc.). But what finally got me to call it quits was being called into a weight station and charged a $1500 'fine for littering'. I have no idea what caused it. I have to assume it was because either I dropped off a pizza between when I was called in and weighing or because I stepped outside to seal a hull breach. Regardless, nothing that was inside my ship was left outside to avoid a weight fine and, at that point, I was just 'naw, I'm out' at that point. TLDR; the game has some really strong bones but needed a lot more playtesting/bug hunting.

I preface this review with the fact that I love this game. Everything about it scratches a very specific itch I have. That said, the game is unplayable with HOTAS. And they've known about it from first reports of the issue in September of 2025. I'm writing this review in August of 2026. The developers have let HOTAS go completely unsupported for over a year, and that's if I grant that they weren't aware of it before some guy submitted a bug report on their Steam community. They even released a public update in June that they knew HOTAS was unplayable and yet... here we are. With nothing. Still an unplayable game. Sure, I can go in and play with keyboard, or a controller, but I've already done that. That's where my hours came from. Now I want to play with my very expensive HOTAS setup, like every single other space sim allows me to do as a basic requirement, and I cant with this game specifically. Had there been no HOTAS support for a few months I wouldn't be writing this. For *over a year*? Come on. Know your demographic. People playing this game have a weird combination of loving space sims and transportation sims. We play ATS with a wheel. We expect to play ST with HOTAS. Happy to update my review to being overwhelmingly positive if they ever get HOTAS support out there. But until then, for sim fans, this game isn't it. Wait another 5 years or so until they support the devices people like to play sims with.

For now im gonna lean on negative since i personally disagree with certain mechanic of the game until its tweaked but oh well too late to refund. Don't get me wrong game is nice, especially with recent content update with ventures but certain stupid issue really drains me of motivation to play game because how unfair sometimes it is. Personally what i like about this game: +Space scavenging +Interacting with modules and managing power drain +General space environment (alot of locations are cool) +[spoiler] Smuggling compartment and sonar sensors [/spoiler] What i dont like in this game: - Can't upgrade rig cameras for better visibility (im not talkin about 3rd person, im talkin about the ones you use in solar storms) - Resting is not beneficial, especially noticeable end game, even if its for very short time like skipping 15 min in-game Things i would like to see: Special upgrades from [spoiler] from Sour Candy [/spoiler] workshop like maybe sonar constantly staying on but rig is bulkier to control? Since there are multiple empty menu slots in venture - maybe sector expansion? Like bringing small (scavangble) items or big (freights, trailers etc.) for exchange having a gas station or body shop in specific location? Now for the main issue im giving it currently negative: [b] Service component wear and tear [/b] For those who dont know what im talkin about - game has durability on 2 things - hull (which is like hp for the truck, you crash, you lose some durability) and service components (upgrade components for truck, like, yknow, faster speed, impact resistance and etc) My issue with service components is that instead of being like hull - drive carefully and you wont get damaged - it is rng based. Some following examples are if you use shutters (basicly insulated window so you dont cook in solar storm) it will drain service component duarbility OF ALL COMPONENTS and god forbid if it has ! on that specific component because then you either go to specific auto shop (where you can upgrade rig) ASAP to fix it or that component which has a problem will slowly drain durability of ALL components and infect with damage every other component after some time, like what the hell does enabling window gotta do with thrusters or trailer hooking component?? Sure some say "repairs for service components are cheap like 500-1k" until you almost upgrade your flying rig fully and have to pay 20k instead of 500 (for the record, hauling cargo from 1 sector to another is roughly 1-2k). Another example which really pissed me off that in dockable station, which provides free power for your ship, if you rest there for in game 1-2h, all your components gonna be from 100% to at 5-15%. Even with powering down non-vital components its gonna still take significant wear and tear down to 20% and below. The main point about the issue is why player must be punished for upgrading himself to do better tasks? What kind of truck breaks down simply by being idle for an hour or more?! Is this some kind of "Fast & Risky" mechanic which cant be negated? I was already mildly dissapointed that station does not provide recharge for batteries since power is free but issue with service components is simply bs. What is even more stranger that it takes around 10-12 jump gates before components start to drain, each jump gate skips 1-2 hours of in-game to travel in superlight, so what kind of stupid logic is that truck breaks down faster powered down and idle than it actually being used? To people who's gonna say "but you can disable survival mechanic", yeah but that only apply to the inner rig managment - batteries, control units, oxygen and etc. - the service components are not part of survival mechanic, its same category as hull. And yeah i can let it be at 0% and let it disable my upgrades and let me burn my rig with me included if solar storm incomin or shock all my rig with everything inside on contact with eletrical anomaly but in that case what's the point of upgrades at all if its just gonna financially bite in the rump much worse than afterdamage of solar storm or contact with electrical anomaly? The best part of this all is that you can't revert made upgrade to specific subsystem, enjoy game just deleting your financial progress now and then because you can't make immediate detour to upgrade shop or force you to spend tons of time going from one side of galaxy to other because otherwise you are screwed. It would be fine if you could repair/replace service component on the go with small items just like with batteries and etc but no, i guess developers had different idea about that. So long story short - one of mechanic is very unfair which affects gameplay big time, giving it negative until something is done about it.