Food Truck Simulator, the latest simulator from DRAGO Entertainment, perfectly captures the dynamism and stress of running an actual food truck, complete with inter-truck competitions and a light seasoning of revenge.
Story
The story centers around an unnamed protagonist who decides to honor his dead father by continuing the family food truck business. Apparently, despite his dad being super into the food truck, the truck lacks a lot of the equipment you would expect to find, such as a fryer for fries. And despite having spent a ton of time riding along with his father, the protagonist has no idea how to make any of the food for the food truck. Thankfully, the game provides some aid in the form of Clara, your dad’s former grocery supplier, who takes a suspiciously strong interest in helping the protagonist revive the food truck. This might just be my own head canon, but now that I’m thinking about it, I bet Good Ol’ Dad and Clara had some extra arrangements on the side. Why else would she give such steep discounts on her burger buns and patties?!
With Clara by his side, the protagonist cannot help but succeed! Enter Dennis.
Now I haven’t played Gas Station Simulator, also by DRAGO Entertainment, but apparently Dennis and the unnamed protagonist are both characters in that as well. And apparently there is some history because, after the protagonist and Dennis both park at the same food truck location, Dennis takes that shush personally, escalates to an 11, and takes his frustration out on the protagonist by committing arson and attempted murder on the player protagonist by BURNING DOWN THE FOOD TRUCK GARAGE WITH THE PROTAGONIST INSIDE!
For whatever reason, all the characters care about is that the food truck is gone, NOT THAT THE PROTAGONIST ALMOST DIED! There’s a delightful minigame during this section where the player character has to fight the flames with a fire extinguisher in an attempt to get to the door and out of the garage. Sometimes he makes it, and sometimes he doesn’t, passing out from smoke inhalation inside a burning building.
But yeah, sure, the worst part of this is that the food truck is gone. And despite witnessing Dennis set the fire and run off giggling, no charges are pressed for the attempted murder???? DRAGO make it all make sense.
Anyway, at this point, the game takes on a bit of a darker theme and should actually be called REVENGE TRUCK SIMULATOR.
All of this is engaging, unexpected, and honestly hilarious. The story is ludicrous enough to be super enjoyable. It just stinks that the gameplay mechanics completely ruin this game.
Gameplay
Food Truck Simulator consists of a whole bunch of mini-games, from burger making to GTA-style deliveries. Players will have to juggle a whole bunch of different activities that are surprisingly obsessively fun and absolutely maddening at the same time.
For me, the main issue with game play might only be an issue when playing because of the ridiculously small area of interaction around each clickable object. Here’s an example. In the game, players need to make pizzas with all kinds of toppings. The first mini-game for this consists of cutting the pepperoni stick into slices. It both does and doesn’t matter how big or nice the slices are cut. It doesn’t matter because once the player has cut a certain number of slices, the game will provide a neatly stacked pile of evenly cut pepperoni. It does matter because the player has to cut the specific section of pepperoni that the game chooses, and if you were not careful with your chops, this could mean trying to get the knife to slice the smallest, most awkwardly shaped piece of pepperoni ever.
Which actually brings up the most annoying aspect of the entire game. The area of clickable interaction is just so unforgiving. I have to hover exactly on top of a dime-sized piece of pepperoni to pick it up. There is no leeway. If you are moving fast, this can mean several lost seconds with the pointer swinging wildly left and right before players remember to take a deep breath and enter a perfectly zen-like state in order to be able to move the cursor to the exact right spot.
Don’t get me started on trying to select a tool from the tool wheel. Just thinking about it makes my resting heart rate rise.
Overall
6/10
I’m going to caveat this and say this score only applies to the console versions of this game, as I suspect it would be less frustrating with a mouse.
Pros: Absolutely bananas story.
Cons: Players have to fully become Neo at the end of the Matrix to make pizza and sushi.
I thoroughly enjoyed a lot of Food Truck Simulator, so much so that I will probably purchase Gas Station Simulator (for my Steam account). There’s a lot to love here. The whole concept of the game and minigames is great. But the playability ruins a lot of the enjoyment I might have gotten from it.
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Related: Reviews by Michelle Jones
I'm a completionist gamer who just needs to find that one last object and clear that final dungeon. I love all video games, from open world sandboxes on a console to a mindless match three on my phone. In addition to gaming and writing, I am a graduate student working on a thesis about the ancient Icelandic Sagas. Feel free to ask me anything about Vikings.
Thank you for writing this post. I like the subject too.