Trucker Quest is the story of Bill, a trucker and his quest. Bill is a simple guy, trucking his way across, well, a not quite named land, the only thing we know about him is he drives a truck and he loves his hat. Not in a paraphilic kind of way, he just loves his hat. That however will be his downfall. When he's busy in a truck stop bathroom washing some of the desert from his face a speedy thief comes along and steals his hat. Bill of course has no choice but to give chase, it is his favourite hat after all.


Because that always works with thieves.

So after chasing after the little rascal who made off with his hat Bill ends up, well somewhere else. It seems this truck stop is actually an interdimensional hub, with each of the toilet stalls being a gateway to another dimension. It's a good thing Bill just wanted to wash his face if he'd used one of the stalls unknowingly there is no telling where he would have ended up. Still it seems that in order to go after the thief he's going to have to do just that as gaining admittance to the land beyond requires the permission of five dimensional lords. So with a heavy heart and no thought to his employer's schedule Bill heads off into the toilet stalls of destiny.

The thing is, this should be funny, but it really isn't. It's done in such a serious and sensible manner than there isn't anything humorous about it. That's not a negative it's just an odd choice on the part of the developers. The opportunity for literal toilet humour is endless, but it just doesn't appear. Bill treats the fact that each of the stalls is actually an interdimensional gateway with the same aplomb and equanimity as most people in the first world would feel walking into a supermarket through the front door. There's just nothing unusual about it, and because it isn't unusual for Bill, it's not unusual for the player either.

I'm not sure if part of that sense of composure is because the game's developer is Brazilian and it's a translation mismatch, or the conveying of a non-English sensibility, but it works, and it works to the game's advantage. In regard to the actual translation, there are very few errors in language. Which is a pleasant surprise as lately I've been running across games that seem to treat English as an optional extra even when the developer is a native English speaker, or at the very least indicates they reside in an English speaking country.

Whilst I'm on the aesthetics the graphics are a mix of custom graphics for most of the sprites and the default for pretty much everything else, though there is a mix of those from the classic to the futuristic. The music is likewise the default with a couple of custom tracks thrown in and whilst it's not brilliant it's serviceable and each theme fits the world you enter pretty well.

Through each doorway Bill finds a different world, a lonely island with a solitary cabin on it, home of Hank Toms and his beach ball friend (yes, I know) who also happens to be the dimensional lord, Hank that is, not the beach ball. Personally I'd be calling him the Lord of Stupid since all he has to do to leave the island is walk into the only other building there and end up at the truck stop in Bill's dimension, but no, he stays and is pathetically happy to see anyone.


Dude, walk through the other door. You can even take Wilson your ball with you.

There is also Puzzle world, with a series of switches, push buttons, stop fences and boulders to navigate to reach the home of the Lord and obtain his signature on your permission slip, the puzzles aren't too complicated but they are somewhat convoluted with a lot of the action happening off-stage so in order to see what each switch or button accomplished you have to wander back and forth and note any changes. Some of the switches have multiple actions when either on or off, the push buttons are single action and once depressed cannot be used again.

Once Puzzle world is conquered Bill moves casually on to T3F3 the only world with an official name, handily supplied by the voice over artist. This futuristic setting required Bill to enter into combat. It seems this world which appears to be run by a walking talking laptop is in need of a set of 10 demon horns for reasons that I'm quite glad Bill didn't question. The possibilities are too horrendous to contemplate. So after agreeing to this somewhat outlandish request, the things a man will do for his favourite hat, Bill gets to hunt down demons and dehorn them.

Battles in this dimension are the on-screen action style with either the enter or A key enabling you to damage your enemy, but at no time are you in any danger of defeat as you have a great many more HP than the enemy and your HP refills after very fight so it's just a case of button mashing until all of the flying devils imps are dead.

Once those pesky demon's have been defeated we move to a green a pleasant land currently under the sway of the dark and terrible evil Lord of Darkness, who according to reliable sources won't give you his permission. He is dark, terrible and evil after all, but fear not the sweet Queen of the Faeries believes in you and if you can defeat the dark and terrible evil lord of Darkness she'll become the lord of the dimension and she will totes sign your permission slip. So with a sigh and probably wondering just what was in that bottle of water he drank before Bill sets of to slay the dark and terri...oh you get the picture.


Yay, it is cliché world!

Unlike T3F3 the battles here consist of the default turn based front view system with no additional bells and whistles so there's nothing unexpected there. I did find it somewhat amusing that Bill's default weapon is a trucker's hammer, which gives a whole new meaning to the CB phrase about putting the hammer down. This section is the only one with a slight language mismatch as Bill's two possible skills are foot on the door and fist on the face both of which are physically possible but it is more likely that the preposition should have been 'in'. Unlike the earlier on-screen battle system Bill does not heal after every fight, but as each enemy is relatively weak and goes down after a couple of rounds it's not a difficult world to conqueror, even the Dark Lord isn't much of a challenge. Though you do get a choice with that one depending on your conversation with the Dark Lord before the fight. Either way once you've defeated or negotiated you are on your way to the last dimension and one step closer to your hat.

That last dimension however is not quite what you were expecting and once you've worked it out and got the signature of its Lord then there is nothing standing in your way, well nothing that is but the little sneak thief that took it in the first place. Just like with the Dark Lord there is a choice here as to how you deal with the Collector, but no matter which option you take you'll eventually win your way to the room of hats and take one back with you, as to which hat, well that's one I'll leave for you to see when you play the game.

Trucker Quest isn't a long game, my last save clocked in at around 30 minutes, but I'm the sort to investigate nooks and crannies to see if that have anything in them so the game could probably have been completed in 20 without missing out on anything. Still there was quite a lot packed into those 20 minutes and whilst the story was a little odd it was coherent and executed with a fair degree of success.