Trucktroidvania

SnowRunner uses a familiar structure to reveal its gorgeous wilderness

I had started up a post last week that was exploring the reasons that I’m enjoying a particular fussy wargame, but it’s been waylaid by a few unexpected events. One of those is the debut of SnowRunner, a working truck simulator game that’s about driving beefy vehicles around in the wilderness, delivering logs and pulling other vehicles out of swamps. Here’s one reason why I was immediately excited to play SnowRunner:

That, my friends, is the dashboard of an early 1990s-era Chevy 1500 pickup truck. Note the cheap black slab design for the sound system and climate controls. Also note the flimsy windshield wiper arms. I became very familiar with this truck while I was stationed in Kentucky, when my roommate sold me one for $200. The one I had wasn’t blue, it was rust colored. Not pictured here, nor represented in SnowRunner at all, is the driver’s side door handle that broke off in my hand one day. Same story with the windshield wiper arm that constantly fell off. The play button on the cassette deck was stuck in the down position due to an incident that occurred prior to my first ride in the truck. The tailgate refused to open unless you jiggled the handle just so.

It was a heap of junk.

On the outside, anyway. Miraculously, that truck never quit when it came to actually getting me and anything I wanted with me from one place to another. As long as you frequently filled it with gas, the engine just kept going, and it didn’t much care whether any of the rest of the truck was ready to go too.

The Chevy 1500 in SnowRunner feels remarkably true to the experience I had driving around in one in Kentucky years ago. The big suspension springs bounce the camera drunkenly around, and the truck sort of heaves forward a moment or two after you hit the gas pedal. It’s hard to quantify exactly, but watching the truck on my PC screen, controlling it with an Xbox gamepad, it feels completely right.

My editor Ben has written a full review of SnowRunner for PCGamesN, which I’d encourage you to check out, as it’s both an entertaining read and a good showcase of what SnowRunner does.

I’ll skip over the description, which is covered in Ben’s review, and get to the part where I add my own full-throated recommendation of SnowRunner. It’s a touch on the janky side, but SnowRunner is in a completely different league than its forebears, SpinTires and MudRunner.

One reason for this is that there’s a real game structure layered over the crunchy simulation now. As Ben points out, a lot of this smacks strongly of Ubisoft’s icon-packed open worlds, but I’d argue that SnowRunner is doing something quite a bit smarter than simply plopping a bunch of unconnected activities into a bunch of big, beautiful outdoor maps. When you start out in that shitbox Chevy, you’ll find that there are a bunch of places you just can’t go, and no amount of determination from that little Detroit V6 engine is going to change that. You’ll have to explore a bit, poke at the edges of the area available to you, to find contracts you can complete. Some of these will lead to the construction of pathways to previously inaccessible areas, and they’ll all net you cash and experience points. These you can use to buy new parts for your truck, as well as for the trucks you discover and haul back to your garage, some of which are more suited for heavy duty tasks than your pickup.

This process of exploring an area, mapping out the gated-off areas, and building your own traversal abilities up through discovery and quest completion is more Dark Souls than Far Cry. On Twitter, I’ve been insisting that SnowRunner is a Metroidvania, and I’m not kidding. The perspective has shifted to third person, and rather than exploring Dracula’s castle or the planet Zebes, you’re plowing through heavy snow and deep mud in rural Michigan, Alaska, and Russia. I might want to get to a new town or a factory I haven’t visited yet, but discover a rock slide or downed power pylon has blocked the road. By bringing materials and supplies to a nearby job site, I can have those obstacles cleared—but I’ll need a truck capable of reaching and hauling those materials to do it.

All the pieces of a traditional Metroidvania are here, they’re just cleverly recontextualized in a rugged real-world wilderness setting, where your enemies aren’t zombies or space pirates, but simply the muddy ruts and flooded fields you have to navigate in order to complete each task you take on. And as with any good Metroidvania, you’ll need to learn your way around, adding your own knowledge of the terrain to what you’re shown on your map.

It’s also gorgeous, have I mentioned? The way SnowRunner handles natural light, in particular, is just awe-inspiring sometimes.

I’m still in the early hours of the game, but I’ve unlocked enough trucks now that the more serious contract work is becoming feasible. So if you’ll excuse me, I have some parts to deliver to the drill site.