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Red: Space Trucker

Published by Naixela Software
Price $14.95
Download
Primary Genre Secondary Genre

Imagine a world with space-faring trucks. What if you drove one of those trucks, what if you were a space trucker fighting Space Deer, Space Possums, Space Pirates, and more! No, this has nothing to do with a certain Dennis Hopper film, this is the story of Red, a Space Trucker, star of this "fast, deadly, pant-wetting" action game.

Levels start off nice and easy... (the white bit in the middle is your headlights in case you couldn't tell). The game becomes difficult early on, with lightning strikes being one the early attacks.

It's always worth getting excited when you read game promo text with phrases like "nipple-twisting special effects and sounds", after all, it must be true or the developer wouldn't say it, right?

In Red: Space Trucker, developer Naixela Software delivers a game not too disimilar to Smash TV, and more recently the excellent Mutant Storm. You play Red, a truck driver who has the dubious honour of moving his rectangular truck sprite around a top down single screen star field. Your truck can be moved in any direction with the cursor keys, whilst shooting is handled with the mouse and a cross-hair.

Meet Red, a character with no bounds, no inhibitions and usually no pants.

Gameplay involves you moving around the screen, avoiding enemies (who seem to transport in) and firing at anything hostile. You get several modes of play but they are all essentially the same with the core objective being to stay alive. Help is available with the unique truck-fart bomb which clears the screen.

Although I raised Smash TV and Mutant Storm as examples of the genre that Red:ST occupies, I shouldn't have as that unfortunately taints those two games with the same brush. Sadly, Red:ST offers no depth and quickly degenerates into a painful click and hope scramble to stay alive.

Nipple-Twisting Special Effects are described on the games website. Well, the graphics certainly brought tears to my eyes but I'm not sure that is what Naixela meant. To be fair, graphical prowess isn't really the problem here, its the gfx overkill. The game is hard enough as it is, so do we really need all the extra asteroid sprites?

Sound is above average. The spot effects might even bring a smile to your face, but then you'd expect to laugh at least once at a game that features a fart bomb! I should point out that on my machine, the game does seem to have a couple of bugs, both with the sound and with an over-enthusiastic high score table that sometimes stays on screen, overlayed above the other game menus.

It's hard to give Red: Space Trucker anything close to an average score, but that is because I've been spoilt by fond memories of past games and recent memories of Mutant Storm. Personally, I'd download the demo and see if you like it. You might want to look at that other game I keep mentioning too.

Graphics 65%
Sound 60%
Playability 35%
Longevity 25%
Overall Score 40%
No Award

Published on 18 Mar 2005
Reviewed by Hayden Yale

Keywords: red: space trucker review, naixela software reviews, naixela software games, red: space trucker scores, pc game reviews, indie game reviews, independent gaming.