REVIEW: ‘Truck-kun Is Supporting Me From Another World’ Is Absurd Fun

Truck-kun Is Supporting Me From Another World, an arcade driving action/exploration game developed by Strange Scaffold and published by Frosty Pop and Strange Scaffold, tasks players with helping Carissa get back from another world after a truck hits her and accidentally sends her there. For Carissa to return, she needs you to send more people to the other world through your vehicular prowess (hit them with your truck). It’s time to isekai some folks.

There is a bizarre, joyful, ridiculous blend of fun to be found here. The silliness that coats every element of this experience is thick and effective. Careening around corners, slamming into everything you find amidst the brightly colored city streets and upbeat tunes leaves one cackling. And the story Truck-kun Is Supporting Me From Another World builds its roughly four-hour campaign around is just as much fun as the core gameplay loop. 

Opening with a brief cutscene where we are introduced to Carissa, an eager young go-getter who has surrendered all her joy and hobbies for the sake of climbing the corporate ladder, as she has just received her long-sought-after promotion. Her elation carries her, springing from her office building, right into the path of an oncoming truck.

Truck-kun Is Supporting Me From Another World’s brief dialogue scenes are impressive amongst the chaos.

Immediately upon dying, Carissa appears to the truck driver as an elf warrior, reborn in another world. Through a mix of guilt and intimidation, she strong-arms the rattled truck driver into helping her return by isekai-ing more folks for her to fight so she can level up, defeat the Skeleton King, and return home.

What Truck-kun Is Supporting Me From Another World does with the brief dialogue scenes that play out as players progress through the game is impressive. Despite always being immersed in the craziness necessary for the game’s core concept to feel fun and not morbid, a shocking amount of heart comes through in the back third of the story as the driver learns about Carissa and her place in life. 

This surprising narrative arc makes the game much more than the frantic arcade driving game it otherwise would be. Despite the game’s ability to make me laugh endlessly, its sweet moments are what elevate it, turning it into something really special, rather than just something hysterically fun. 

The fun of rampaging through town in your truck never ends.

Each game level takes place in a small, open-world city map. With limited time, the player must drive around the city, hitting everything smaller than a tree or house. Hitting people sends them to the other world as monsters for Carissa to fight. (This is visible through a pixel art window at the bottom of the screen). Hitting inanimate objects powers up Carissa’s ultimate attack, which can be unleashed by blowing the truck’s horn once fully charged. Sending and defeating enemies earns Carissa stars that level her up and help progress the story.

But fending off monsters in the other world isn’t the only path to victory. Within each level, there is an unending string of randomly selected objectives to be completed. These range from hitting certain things with your truck to performing driving maneuvers like drifting, driving backward, or driving through style rings scattered around the city. These objectives will either score you stars or add time to the in-game clock, giving you more time to rampage through town. 

Along with the smaller, in-level objectives, Truck-kun Is Supporting Me From Another World tasks players with completing larger, cross-mission milestones. Presented in batches, players must complete all of the milestones in a batch to unlock a new set, as well as progress the story. Every batch has an obligatory “Acquire X Number of Stars” milestone, as well as an assortment of others. These large-scale objectives are tracked even before unlocking, so they can be gained instantly if the player has already achieved the requirement for completion. 

Different task types diversify the gameplay.

While most of these objectives simply help focus the player’s reckless rampages, a couple of these objectives can sap the fun from Truck-kun Is Supporting Me From Another World‘s moment-to-moment gameplay. The worst is the delivery missions. 

Since the player works for a delivery company, he still needs to make his deliveries, even as he helps Carissa. Stopping in a designated circle for a few moments will acquire a package, with an arrow appearing above the truck, indicating the direction the player must go to drop the package off at its destination. Overall, it’s a fine element when just being done sporadically, but near the end of the game, the milestone system takes the concept a bit too far.

Late in Truck-kun Is Supporting Me From Another World, the game requires the player to make a fixed number of deliveries in a single run. This task feels counterintuitive to the core gameplay loop. There isn’t enough time to do the deliveries without scoring bonus time. There are some time bonus items scattered around the map, but whether or not your routes take you close to them is random.

Trying to score bonus time through objectives is also harsh. With only a few available at any given time, if you don’t get ones that can be accomplished en route between pick-up and drop-off, you are left feeling stuck. Going out of your way generally wastes as much time, if not more than you earn, making some runs feel doomed. 

Free roam lets you have at it and drive around crashing everywhere without objectives.

This task only comes up once with an objective number high enough to cause the core gameplay loop to come apart, making it an unfortunate frustration, but by no means a deal breaker. As the only objective in the game that is bad, the rest of the experience runs incredibly smoothly.

As the player completes objectives in a mission, a heat gauge rises, eventually summoning police cars to harass the player. These officers mean business, as they come crashing at you full-bore. Luckily, a well-timed boost or sideswipe (I came to think of it more as a vehicular hip-check) maneuver can take them out. These troublesome antagonists can make hitting objectives a little tougher, as they interfere with your attempts to target certain objects in the environment.

Along with the story mode, Truck-kun Is Supporting Me From Another World also offers a free roam mode that lets you drive around without objectives or deliveries. It’s just you, crashing through everything. This mode is nice as a time killer, though I think it would be better served with the deliveries turned on. Being able to practice where routes may go from one pick-up to drop-off when you aren’t on a timer would’ve been a helpful element, especially when I was struggling near the end. 

Truck-kun Is Supporting Me From Another World is an incredibly fun experience.

The visual presentation never fails to lean into the game’s fun. The animation of folks fleeing and the truck wheeling around turns wildly always works to amplify the chaos of the game. When large jumps are made, the camera delivers some nice cinematic shots of you gracefully sailing through the sky. And occasionally a jump will trigger the camera, just to call you out on your poor angling as you ram into a wall. But that is hysterical too. 

The cutscenes are presented in visual novel-style still images that push the larger-than-life personalities of the characters, especially Carissa. A couple more elaborate sequences bookend the game’s narrative, letting the first and last impressions you get of the story be the best. 

Despite a major frustration landing late in the game, Truck-kun Is Supporting Me From Another World is an incredibly fun experience. The absurd concept combines with hysterical writing to bring a fun and unique experience that never takes its foot off the gas. A must-play for anyone looking to laugh and smile their way through a frantic adventure. 

Truck-kun Is Supporting Me From Another World is available now on PC and Xbox Series X|S.