This game wouldn’t let me dump 30000 pounds of fruit on my ex’s front lawn. I have never been so disappointed by a game in my life.

This is my truck. It is stuck. Please help friend truck.

American Truck Simulator is a truck driving simulation game. It has some business management elements - such as managing a potential fleet of trucks and their drivers - but those aren’t the point. The point is that you are a trucker driving your truck across the vast highways of the American west, moving from place to anonymous place, hauling goods you never see to destinations that are little more than names on a map.

I am not good at driving the truck.

The goal of any sim game - and especially a job sim - is some degree of verisimilitude, though to what degree varies depending on the type of game. For American Truck Simulator, it very much presents itself as as realistic a sim as possible, with the various cities of Nevada, California, and Arizona lovingly recreated and placed in miniature in the game’s map. I recognised routes I’ve driven before, and felt a pang of nostalgia and loss as I drove along the 10 towards the sea. I have never driven a truck before in my life, and for my motorcycle-riding brain, the very concept of doing so is an alien one. Yet, in the long quiet passages between towns only meaningful because of their gas stations, I felt something I haven’t felt in a long time, and which I miss.

I felt the haunting call of wanderlust, and the yearning for the open road.

There is no traffic, no one cutting me off, and no accident clogging a lane. Least realistic depiction of the 5.

As I sat in the cab of my truck, I remembered the road trips I’ve been on, and the long drives to places I didn’t recognise or remember. I thought about the most recent road trip I took, driving a U-Haul from Texas to North Carolina with a Nissan Leaf hitched to the back. I crossed half a continent via places recognisable as little more than a blur and a blot. If you ask me to recall any moments from that drive, I could, but it is only these moments that make the memories. There is no overall oeuvre beyond the reality that is the road trip. As I drove my truck through California, I was also shuttling that van full of objects I couldn’t let go of, and yet which I do not now recall, worrying whether the car strapped to the back was swerving across lanes, and struggling to figure out how to pull my van through a gas pump. I entered a world of signage I had always seen without seeing, of staying in lanes I’d previously scorned, and of judging places by metrics wholly unfamiliar. It’s this world that American Truck Simulator pulled me back to, and it’s to this world of memories my brain returned.

Part of this is because of the transparency of the actual character in the game. There is no character, beyond a small picture on the loading screen. The driver is you, and the experiences are your own. Beyond the occasional yawns and honks of the horn, there is no sign of life from the silent protagonist, leaving you alone with the truck, your thoughts, and the endless ribbon of road streaming out ahead.

Much like the real Los Angeles, I have realised I am in the wrong lane, and must now cause three accidents to fix it.

My ex is from the Los Angeles area. I used to travel out to see him, and as a result, I have explored quite a bit of southern and central California. I know the roads to Bishop as well as any place I’ve actually lived, and I know the twists and turns of the labyrinth Los Angeles has masquerading as a highway system. When the game’s GPS was wrong, I knew it immediately, and I corrected it without thinking. As I chugged along through Los Angeles, I took a route that would lead me along the Pacific Coast Highway. I didn’t have to do this - it was out of the way and slower - but it’s what I wanted to do. The road was mine, and the time was mine. I cannot be there in California in reality, so I went there in my mind, using the game to facilitate the journey. I traced the outline of the sea, watched the sun set over the sea, and remembered every drive we took together. I remembered the accidental road trip to Yosemite, and the long, winding path back along the PCH, whipping through tight bends in the pitch black of night.

I sat silent in my truck, watching memories flow by.

to the sun and the dust and the pain of california

I do not know who the target audience of American Truck Simulator is. I know there is a vast genre of games like it that capture some seemingly mundane job and make it accessible, and that they are reasonably popular. If you ask me to explain why, I can’t begin to understand, other than to say that somehow, I think I’m in that audience too. I’m not interested in pure accuracy, nor am I looking for a true truck driving experience. What I think I was looking for, whether I knew it or not, was a memory machine. I wanted something quiet and cathartic that I could pretend to find closure in, and chase that feeling that what is now lost doesn’t always have to be. I found a sense of the past behind the wheel of a virtual truck, and in so doing, got lost in contentment once again.

I also got to honk the big horn. Who doesn’t want to honk the big horn?

Developer: Scs Software

Genre: Job Sim, Simulation

Year: 2016

Country: Czechia

Language: English

Play Time: I’M On A Truck And It’S Going Slow And I’Ve Got A Mad Max Themed Pashmina Afghan

Youtube: https://youtu.be/XXFh19nNWPM