Truck-kun Is Supporting Me From Another World?! Review – Corporate Girlboss Meets Vehicular Manslaughter

Strange Scaffold is an indie studio that’s practically staked their reputation on bizarre games. Clickholding, I AM YOUR BEAST, and even adaptations of familiar characters like TMNT: Tactical Takedown all have some element of “weirdness” while still providing an engaging experience for players. So to find out that their next title was a driving game in the vein of Crazy Taxi was not surprising, and uncovering the core mechanic of running over pedestrians and other objects to fuel an in-game isekai was even less so.

Truck-kun is Supporting Me From Another World?! introduces us to Carissa Ward, a corporate cog in the machine rushing to her first day of work when all of a sudden, she’s run over by a truck. Instead of outright killing her, the truck transports her to an 90s JRPG “isekai” world where she is stuck for the foreseeable future on the bottom of the screen. To escape, Carissa must enlist the truck driver that ran her over to feed her energy, giving her enemies to kill by running over pedestrians, and giving her attack power by smashing into any object that crosses the truck’s path.

What follows is a rambunctious racing adventure through the cartoon town of Wenvale, all while driving a rampaging truck that’s trying to save Carissa from becoming stuck in the isekai domain forever. Altogether, Truck-kun is Supporting Me From Another World?! is a thrilling ride that just barely doesn’t collapse under the weight of its own frantic mechanics.

The core loop is thus: hit lots of pedestrians and objects while paying attention to the isekai window at the bottom of the screen. Once enough enemies are on the screen and once her attack is charged up enough by hitting telephone poles and fences, the truck can honk and subsequently eviscerate the enemies in the isekai window below. Truck-kun is at its best when I’m darting my eyes between the isekai window and the road, trying to balance completing in-game objectives and slaying enemies in the isekai window below.

The truck is fitted out to the nines to help in this task, and has lots of movement tools in its arsenal to mow down the inhabitants of Wenvale to save Carissa from pixelated hell. It has the standard tools of racing games: accelerating, reversing, drifting, and boosting. Some of my favorite additions to the Truck-kun are the dramatic sideswiping it can do against unsuspecting cars, as well as the sharp 180 degree turn with a press of a button.

The amount of movement options makes each new run dynamic enough to keep coming back for more. Especially with Truck-kun’s GTA-style heat system; as players rack up more and more hits and accomplish various missions in each run, the game will start sending police cars at you, police cars that Carissa jokingly says are ineffective. She’s right – while the police cars that fly at the main truck are cloaked in armor that can only break with a sideswipe or a boost in their direction, they don’t pose much of a challenge, only leading to a bit of time loss if you run into them. They’re mere distractions while listening to the bopping soundtrack that underscores each frantic run.

However, stringing these movement techniques together starts to reveal the small cracks in the controls. Oftentimes when driving the truck it feels like I am controlling a runaway train when blazing down the roads. At high speeds, the truck’s drifts look and feel delayed, hitting boost pads is sometimes difficult because of a hitbox issue, and it’s just very difficult to stabilize. The movement issues in Truck-kun are not enough to sour my enjoyment of its core loop, but they are noticeable.

What is more noticeable, and not a drag, is Truck-Kun’s progression. Every run begins similarly – the player starts the truck up with a two-minute time limit and a few goals in the top right corner that give them something to shoot for. Every goal gives a player stars or extra time to keep the run alive for just a bit longer: some hits include knocking down 50 objects, ramming into some armored cement mixers, or jumping and drifting a certain number of meters. Even though the map is fairly small, I found a lot of enjoyment in exploring every corner of it, eventually coming to know it like the back of my hand. I only reached a point where runs started to feel monotonous towards the very end when grinding out the longer-term progress  milestones. Each milestone requires the player to get an amount of stars, drift or drive a number of meters, or hit enough pedestrians that players can do in each outing. These totals are massively high, meant to be collected over tens of runs.

Because of how engaging this loop is, Truck-kun’s story takes a backseat. Don’t get me wrong, the story is cute – even though he did run Carissa over with his car, Carissa and the truck driver form an unlikely bond as she realizes the emptiness from the corporate lifestyle she’s adopted. The writing is certainly hilarious, but any moral undertones wash over me while I’m trying to focus on hitting people with my truck.

Truck-kun is Supporting Me From Another World?! is a great example of a simple, funny idea executed on the highest possible level that only a studio like Strange Scaffold could accomplish. Sometimes it falls short of its goal, but I admire it, and appreciated the time I had running people over to save an isekai world.

Jack reviewed Truck-kun is Supporting Me From Another World?! on PC with his own bought copy. This review is based on the version of the game available at the time of writing and our score will not be changed.