Clustertruck (Xbox One)

The physics of a video game world are incredibly important to the feel of the game. Imprecise physics can lead to glitchy interaction and physics that are incompatible with the gameplay style can bog it down. Some games though just like to design a physics system and essentially let it run amok, the developers hoping the players will enjoy the carnage caused by the way the physics make in-game objects behave. Clustertruck is definitely one of those kinds of games.

Clustertruck’s central conceit is that any surface that isn’t a truck will be instantly fatal to the player if they touch it. Therefore, the in-game character must navigate from the start of a level to the end solely by leaping across semi-trailer trucks. Clustertruck isn’t going for any sort of realism in the concept though, the trucks driving through all kinds of locations on their journey from the start of a level to the end of it, including simple forests and deserts but also taking the trucks to medieval times, a laser filled cyber world, and the depths of Hell itself. The main reason why these changes in locale matter is because of how they effect the trucks the player has to hop between. Each new level affects the trucks in some unique way, whether it be putting them on uneven ground, attacking them with giant hazards, or making their doom inevitable to force hopping between multiple convoys so the player can keep moving to the end.

So far, we have a pretty good reflex challenge and speed focused game. But when you play the game, the developer’s choice of having the physics engine do as it pleases begins to reveal a few flaws in the design. When the trucks are spawned in at the start of a level, their movement is not consistent. Trucks that go off-track one run or end up totally flipped over will be fine the next, and the player doesn’t actually impact the trucks in any meaningful way to encourage this variation. The simple truth is the game’s levels don’t actually have the trucks move in a set pattern or fashion, the game hoping you might delight in the chaos of seeing the trucks behave in ridiculous ways. In fact, many levels are specifically set up so that the player has no way of anticipating the hazards the trucks will face until they’ve already played that stage at least once. Whether it be hazards appearing abruptly with no visual clue or just trucks suddenly revealing they are going down doomed roads too late for the player to react, it’s very rare you can beat a level on the first try and your success in repeated plays is as dependent on your skill as it is the random way the trucks decide to drive that round, although some hazards are just as prone to activating differently between runs. There is definitely some appeal to seeing the chaos the trucks face as they are battered around by each other and the level, but having a goal of completion tied to it means that it can feed into frustration as a seemingly good run is ruined by the arbitrary whims of the physics engine. Success in Clustertruck can be acquired by doing the same thing every round until it works rather than getting better at the game. You will need some mastery of the movement of course, but it’s not like the designs of most levels push you to get better, they just push you to stick around until the optimal route has been set up by the trucks for you.

Most levels are made to be close to possible no matter how the trucks move at least, but there are some other small issues the game faces. At first, the player’s character is pretty basic. Playing in a first person perspective, you jump from truck to truck, having some aerial control to guide yourself as you do so, and that’s the only real skill you have. However, while landing on top of a truck or its trailer is obviously safe, the sides of the trucks are a bit inconsistent. Sometimes, you can ride along on the side of it for a bit, other times you immediately glance off it. Sometimes you can scale up the back of a truck, other times you smack up against it and plummet to the ground. Having these options is useful but their unreliable nature just goes to show again that rather than having a tight physics engine, Clustertruck has focused on an amusing one, one that means the trucks serve the visuals a bit more than they do the gameplay.

Luckily, restarting a level is incredibly quick, and as the game progresses, you earn points that can smooth over some of the game’s issues. Points are earned through a few ways, the main one being completing a level, but having long air times to your jumps or performing “stunts” like leaping off a truck that is airborne will add to your end of level score. The game also has bonus points for acing a level on your first try of that, but the whims of fate are more important there than individual skill. When you get enough points, you can turn them in for abilities like an incredibly useful double jump, a grappling hook that lets you quickly pull yourself to another truck, the ability to slow down time or the trucks, and more. You can only have a few set at the time so a hierarchy of usefulness means a few abilities are hard to justify, but these abilities can smooth some of the issues in the game’s design. Having an extra jump means you can course correct, and being able to stop the trucks for a bit can allow you to get to safe ground before they throw themselves into the thick of things. The physics engine tomfoolery is a bit easier to manage once you’ve got at least one useful ability under your belt, allowing legitimate challenges in the level design be the hazard you engage with more.

Most levels are short so that retrying them won’t hurt, but the final boss, the only real battle in the game, is grueling in its length and the fact one bit of contact with anything but trucks kills you will makes it worse than the reasonably sized regular stages. Speed of play helps you get back on the horse and retry normal levels to push through the variance in truck movement and hazard deployment, but the final boss asks incredible precision over an extended period and will hit the same marks of blindsiding with new hazards to make you aware they even exist. Most levels in Clustertruck you might be able to tolerate or maybe even enjoy depending on how they aim to challenge your ability to react quickly, but this battle is slow and tedious unless you get really inventive with your abilities to do what the game doesn’t seem to want you to do.

THE VERDICT: Watching the trucks in Clustertruck drive through obstacle courses and get wrecked in various interesting ways could have been fun, but unfortunately there’s a gameplay element tied to it that isn’t really compatible with the chaos. Trucks are inconsistent in their movement and fate but jumping between them values precision. Levels will blindside you with hazards that require foreknowledge to anticipate and overcome, but variance in play means that both the trucks and some hazards makes it so there’s no reliable approach to some stages. Many levels are still decent tests of your reflexes and the abilities you buy can help smooth over some of the troubles caused by the developers just letting the physics engine do as it pleases, something that quick retries also helps with. That doesn’t fix stages like the final boss though, and in general, Clustertruck just values its visual spectacle more than the play, meaning that rather than being a game about getting better at its levels, it’s just as much about hoping the levels line up right for you to beat them.

And so, I give Clustertruck for the Xbox One…

A BAD rating. If not for the extra abilities you unlock and the quick retries, Clustertruck would surely be worse. There is of course some fun to be had just from seeing trucks explode as they are thrown into areas designed to destroy them, but the gameplay approach attached to that doesn’t really fit too well with the fact that these exploding trucks are your only means of defeating the level. There may even be times a level is made unwinnable, a few cases like trucks wiping out far too far from the goal and a small circular entrance being plugged by the first trucks through it crashing seeming like doomed scenarios. If the game was asking you to get good enough at movement to overcome the variance in truck movement then maybe it could almost be okay, but there’s very little room for adjusting your plans in many levels since you are just meant to wait and see if the platforms you need will make it to the end.

Clustertruck is a game with a simple concept, the game even comparing itself to “The Floor is Lava” game kids play. Most of what was said here is negative because there’s very little to look at, you’re bounding from truck top to truck top, and things were either going to be enhanced or hurt by the way new elements are added to it. Clustertruck’s extra abilities help it, but mostly because the other additions need to be overcome. Clustertruck seems designed more to evoke the immediate reaction in a player to seeing some new wacky hazard impact the cars in some way. The reflex challenge, the element the player actually engages with, is a secondary concern that suffers for playing second fiddle to the admittedly enjoyable spectacle of truck chaos.