In manga and anime, the term “truck-kun” refers to an amusingly overused cliché found in countless isekai stories, where the protagonist either dies or gets transported to another world after being hit by a truck. And considering that pretty much every anime trope under the sun eventually gets turned into a video game, why not make one entirely centered around this ridiculous schtick? Better yet, why not have it developed by a Western studio? And so, we have the rather awkwardly named Truck-kun is Supporting Me from Another World.

People are sent to the isekai world to be used as experience fodder. Objects are sent to the same place as energy for Carissa’s weapon.

The game starts with a salarywoman named Carissa Ward walking to her office as she is about to get a promotion. As you may expect, she is hit by a truck-kun before arriving at work. Given how she is a massive otaku who has consumed an unhealthy amount of isekai manga in the past, Carissa is actually aware of where she is, and how she is able to get back home. She is able to contact (or better yet, haunt) the poor guy who ran over her, telling him that she needs to gain experience points and grow as a character in her isekai trap in order to be able to be transported back home.

How is she going to do so? It’s simple: you gotta transport more people onto this isekai world, by running over them. They are transformed into RPG mosnters Carissa is then able to defeat. Objects you crush with your truck are also transported to the isekai world, in the form of energy for Carissa’s sword. And that’s how Truck-kun is Supporting Me from Another World‘s gameplay loop and premise are set. Run over everything, crash everything in sight, in a arcadey loop that feels like a mixture between Crazy Taxi and Carmageddon.

You’re still driving a delivery truck, so might as well do some deliveries amidst the chaos.

A gameplay loop as simple as this just wouldn’t work as well as it sounds, so the game does shove in randomly generated objectives that help you out in a variety of ways. They can either be delivery services (you are still a delivery truck, after all), objectives which grant you additional stars after their completion, or objectives which grant you time extensions after their completion. The more objectives you meet, the longer your run will last, but the higher your heat meter will reach. The police is just a small nuisance, however; you can get rid of obstacles and enemies by boosting over them, or pressing the sideswipe button.

This is Truck-kun is Supporting Me from Another World in a nutshell. It works well, for about an hour or so. It’s not like it’s a very long game to begin with, but the problem is that its novelty wears out quickly due to how poorly optimized the game is. I played it on the Switch 2, and wasn’t able to achieve a mere 30fps on either docked or portable modes. Framerate drops were constant, in a game that isn’t particularly a looker to begin with, and that clearly impacted the controls and their response time. I legit felt disappointed at how clunky it felt at times, especially since I’m reviewing it more than a month after its original release date. Issues like these should have already been noted and fixed by now.

Drive, crash, avoid la policía, all in a kawaii but unoptimized map.

I like the idea behind Truck-kun is Supporting Me from Another World. It is a creative title, mixing two specific arcade gameplay loops in a blender, adding in some occasionally funny dialogue and a self-aware sarcastic tone. It does, however, suffer from some serious performance issues, and its novelty wears off quickly. I feel like this would have been a lot more interesting if it had been better optimized, and with slightly longer play sessions, but at this point in time, I have no idea if it will be patched in the near future.

Truck-kun is Supporting Me from Another World is available now on Xbox Series S/X, PC and Switch 2.

Reviewed on Switch 2.

A copy of Truck-kun is Supporting Me from Another World was provided by the publisher.