No Matter How Bad the World Gets, Clustertruck Helps Me Keep Trucking On
Clustertruck , released in September 2016, is an uncommon example of what you might call a “first-person platformer.” It’s a very simple game. The player is tasked with jumping along a moving caravan of white box trucks until they reach the end of a short course. The goal of each level varies; some require the player to move between opposing caravans of trucks, others to avoid objects in the gameworld, some to jump between laser grids and gigantic falling objects. Touching anything other than a truck is an instant level fail.
It’s not a complicated game, but it does have complexity—the many pieces of it layer on one another until the final, glorious escape at the end of the level, only to be greeted with another, seemingly more frustrating new motion puzzle. It’s goofy and irreverent, full of slight puns and level layouts that play on the absurdity of the premise. But at its core the game is always the same: Clustertruck is about running out of time.
I’ve been playing a lot of Clustertruck recently. Not only is finishing a level satisfying in its own right, there is something cathartic about endlessly running on uneven ground, actively plummeting toward doom or heading straight for it. It was calming, in the way that putting yourself under stress purposefully in a stressful time can be calming—it’s the sense of control.
Lately, that sense of control has become more and more soothing as the world continues to slide into a seemingly endless series of tragedies. If Clustertruck a metaphor, it’s an accidental one.
