By the time giant cannons are firing trucks at the player, they’ll have all the skills down so pat that it won’t even faze them. The first area focuses on riding trucks on uneven terrain, the second shows how to move from one herd of trucks to the next, the third explains how to manage obstacles, and so forth. The worlds also do a great job of teaching one set of skills at a time. Each world has its own visual style, musical theme, and distinctive types of traps and challenges. I was shocked to discover that yes, apparently they can.Ĭlustertruck has 90 levels split up into nine different worlds. I honestly wondered how the developers could possibly keep this wacky conceit going - it’s entertaining and all, but can dozens of levels be crafted out of such a thin premise?

If each level plays differently each time it loads, who’s more responsible for how the level plays out - the person with the controller, or the random number generator responsible for the level’s behavior? Needless to say, I had major misgivings about Clustertruck going in.Ī first-person platformer set in a world with far more trucks than there are roads to carry them, Clustertruck takes the cowboy fantasy of running atop a herd of stampeding cattle and updates it to the modern age as the player bounds from one tractor-trailer to the next, always barreling towards a finish line. Just imagine how unplayable Super Meat Boy would be if the buzzsaws randomly moved wherever they felt like instead of keeping to a set pattern?įew virtual accomplishments compare to executing perfect timing, dodging projectiles and clambering up ledges in challenging platformers, but chaotic platforming steals those moments of triumph from players. When developers then add random elements - chaos, essentially - the core of the experience is at risk. Standard platformers generally ask players to learn specific rules about how their world works, and how to exploit them for the cleanest possible line through a level. Satisfaction is a hard thing to come by in chaotic platformers. LOW Failing a level because the trucks couldn’t make it to the end. HIGH Flying through three sets of gears to just barely reach the goal sign.

Cluster truck game