The capricious hand of chaos is all too keen to stick a finger in and stir things up between attempts, and sure, you could make the argument that this is a fine way to ensure people think on their feet rather than memorising a pattern, but sometimes it’s not an option to look before you leap. There’s also the inherent problem of packing a hundred or so physics-enabled trucks onto the same stretch of road and then asking the player to rely on them for platforms: they can’t. Especially if you actually care which one you land on. This, it turns out, can make it somewhat difficult to land yourself on the back of a heavy goods vehicle being driven by a wasted Niko Bellic. On an unsteady footing it’s often tricky to gauge just how high and far you’ll actually jump if you press the button at a given time-especially if, say, you’re leaping from atop a flying truck that has its own contribution to make to your vertical velocity-and once you’ve actually picked up some airspeed you’ll find that you have the inertia of a grand piano being shoved out the back of a cargo plane, ACME-style. Clustertruck is a curious case in the sense that it actively shirks such features in favour of an experience that would, in the wrong context, be nail-rippingly infuriating. Now look, first-person platforming may never have exactly been the apple of the industry’s eye-mostly because gamers have a curious inability to predict where their feet will be if they aren’t looking straight down at them-but there are things you can do to minimise the gnashing of teeth: forgiving targets, tight air control, consistent jump behaviour, that sort of thing. As is usually the case in the world of wacky physics games, your task is complicated somewhat both by the inclusion of the Sen’s Fortress Starter Kit-a plethora of obstacles and traps that promise to disrupt the flow of trucks in as spectacular a manner as possible-and on many occasions, by the random chaotic whims of the engine. Each level deposits you atop an infinite convoy of trucks-that is to say, lorries, not preposterous overgrown utes with wheel arches you could lose a baby in-and tasks you with reaching a goalpost by running, jumping, scrambling and hopping across their unsteady backs, like the hero of an extremely high-budget action flick that has long since stopped giving a damn. They stand in excruciating silence for thirty seconds, go their separate ways, and live generally unfulfilling lives for the next sixty-odd years.īack in our universe, however, Clustertruck exists, and is every bit as baffling as it sounds. I mean, you see, some walls are walls, and some walls-Īlas, it is an elevator pitch in the most literal sense of the word, and thus neither party can walk away until it reaches the lobby. And the same if you touch the walls?ĭeveloper: Well, you die. Interviewer: ( inhales slowly) Understood. What happens if you touch the ground, then?ĭeveloper: What? Oh, you die. They’re-how do I put this?-physics objects.ĭeveloper: Unpredictable physics objects.

Are the trucks very stable? Predictable? Consistent?ĭeveloper: Not, ah, exactly. Interviewer: This doesn’t sound terribly accessible, but we shall see, I suppose. Yes, a fast first-person platformer, about jumping on the tops of moving trucks. Interviewer: So, tell me about your game.ĭeveloper: Well, it’s a first-person platformer, and. On paper, at least, its design philosophy sounds so counterintuitive that one wonders how the idea was ever pitched in the first place.

Clustertruck game ps4