Perhaps one of my most “old lady yells at cloud” takes is that I hate isekais. It’s a genre wherein a person is transported from one world to another with shenanigans ensuing, and it’s dominating the anime, manga, and Asian TV drama space. Characters often go from present day to the past or to fantasy worlds (or vice versa) and are forced to navigate their new reality in an attempt to make it home. But no matter the medium or the direction in which the souls transmigrate, I cannot stand the storytelling trope, not even in fanfiction. So imagine my surprise when Strange Scaffold’s latest isekai game, Truck-kun Is Supporting Me from Another World?!, charmed the shit outta me.
In the game, you play as a delivery driver who just murdered Carissa Ward, a ladder-climbing executive, by running her over with your truck just as she was on the cusp of a promotion that would launch her out of financial precarity. However, she shows up as a sort of devil on your shoulder, communicating with you from the fantasy world you just sent her to via death by delivery truck (a neat reference to the trope that isekais often start with the protagonist getting clobbered in a car accident). She tells you that you are not gonna mess up this promotion for her, and that it’s your job to help her return to our world.
In order to help Carissa in the fantasy world, she needs to level up her character by fighting monsters, and you’re gonna send her those monsters by running over people in the real world. What I most appreciate about Truck-kun is that it separates me from the icky isekai part. I never have to bother with Carissa in the fantasy world because my main job is in the real world, hitting as many objects and pedestrians as possible while she takes care of the rest. I can check on her through a little progress bar in the game’s UI. Hitting objects powers up her sword and I and can occasionally help her out by hitting a button that unleashes her ultimate attack. But my main job is to drive, and driving is very fun.
I zip and zoom throughout the city in my adorable kei delivery truck—just look at that grin. Controlling the truck isn’t as frustrating as driving is for me in games like Forza Horizon. This isn’t meant to be a driving sim, this is Crazy Taxi (this time without gen-AI), and the developers have made it easy to move fast and break things. You have a boost function, drifting feels incredibly satisfying, and pressing one of the shoulder buttons allows you to sideswipe objects to power up Carissa’s sword or to shake off the cops come to end your Twisted Metal-esque murder spree. The world is also designed for all sorts of chicanery. There are boost pads, ramps to help you get airborne, and rings that, as far as I can tell, exist for no other purpose than to fly through. When you do, the camera cuts from third-person to a wide shot for maximum The Fast and the Furious cinematic effect.
However, the driving environment is one-note given there’s only one map. Once you memorize its layout, it’s easy to drive on auto pilot achieving unimaginative objectives like “drift for 10 seconds” or “hit 30 objects.” I wish the developers put more Tony Hawk in this Crazy Taxi. Truck-kun can jump, but it’d be nice if flicking the sticks or entering a combination of buttons allowed it to do tricks. But the game is short and only $20 bucks at full price so I can forgive it for being less robust than it probably should be. I like this little Murder-By-Way-of-Crazy Taxi game; it’s focused and funny and gives me a neat circuitous way to enjoy a genre I usually absolutely hate.