Taiga car driver:

In Brief:
Taiga car driver is a truck driving survival game made with Unity; set in the freezing cold Taiga region of Russia. Pick up delivery jobs, rescue people and take part in hill climbing competitions in your truck to upgrade your vehicle.


You can see some videos of game play HERE, HERE and HERE.

Introduction:
Taiga is one of the harshest and wildest places on our planet. Your faithful companion truck will help you not only do the job, but also save you from the cold and icy wind. Earn money, upgrade the truck in the workshop. Don't forget about hunger, sleep and warmth. Good luck!


Reference accessed HERE 28th February 2022.

The Game:
The basics of the game are, you pick up various loads to deliver around the Taiga, enter competitions and rescue people to earn XP and cash. Which can then be used to unlock various upgrades for your truck. Because of the adverse weather you have to complete certain tasks to survive in the harsh environments. Cold, thirst and hunger are your worst enemies.

The game includes a 26 page manual explaining what you need to do to survive. I've taken screen captures of each page of the manual, which I've posted as a separate comment attached to this comment. If you read those it will give you a good idea as to the various components of this game.

There are three bar indicators in the bottom left of the screen the top one (Red) indicates your hunger, the bottom one (Blue) how cold you are and the the middle one (Green) is your strength, which can be partially recovered by pitching your tent and sleeping. This is accomplished by opening up the inventory by pressing the Right mouse button. Then scrolling to the tent symbol. Doing this will pitch your tent. To enter move to the front of the tent where you'll see a ZZZ indicator in yellow Walk to this and press the left mouse button. This will an indeterminate amount of sleep. You can see time pass outside the tent while you are asleep. This does not restore your strength completely, plus sleep length and hunger are not controlled. To warm your self up you first need to collect wood (the manual suggests finding wood near trees, which guarantees a better supply) to pick up wood, stand near it and a hand should appear, press the enter key to pick up; you can pick up a maximum of five piles of wood. Access the inventory then scroll to the camp fire symbol. If you have no wood, this will be red in colour and cannot be lit, but you can still place the camp fire stones. Other inventory symbols include the phone, which gives you access to your route, the time and temperature as well as important points on the map, which are indicated with different coloured dots, i.e.

Green = Garage
Yellow = Place to take order
Red = Gas/Petrol Station
Sky Blue = Competition ''Climb Way''
Royal Blue = Rescue Mission
Violet = Hotel

If you are on an exploratory walk about it will also show you where your truck is. So long as you have your phone selected and are on foot, a wheel symbol will appear in the direction of the truck as well as a red triangle on the phones map. Other symbols on the inventory bar include a petrol/gas can, which tells you how much spare fuel in litres you have. You can fill this to a maximum of 20 litres when visiting a garage or sometimes find spare cans of fuel laying around various bases. To refill your vehicle go to the fuel tank, which will appear yellow when you select the fuel cannister symbol in the inventory and are are opposite it, then press the left mouse button to refill the tank. You can see how much fuel you have left in your vehicle via the fuel indicator inside your cab. A torch symbol which is useful for finding wood and food at night, plus canned food, which help to keep hunger at bay. You can carry up to 10 cans of food. To restock, visit a warehouse or hotel. To use food, select the can symbol then select which food you want. This will then bring up a burner with a pan symbol. Place this in a suitable position then press the left mouse button to warm up. When the pan turns green, your food is ready; to eat press LMB again.. To exit the inventory without accessing any of the main symbols select the middle one that looks like a triangle.

There are various tasks that can be carried out to gain experience and cash, both of which are required to improve your vehicle and the former to increase your experience level, which in turn makes it easier to complete some tasks more effectively;

for example, when entering a competition i.e. the Climb Way, You have to climb the track for a specific amount of time to reach the finish. . Completing the climb way competitions will gain experience points which unlock better parts to upgrade your vehicle, which in turn will increase your performance in these competitions. There are also rescue operations that give you rewards. Take on delivery jobs. So long as you deliver the items undamaged you will be paid cash to help towards improving your truck as well as to purchase other items such as food. You can stock up on provisions either via the hotel (food) and the petrol/gas station (fuel). When you pick up a cargo delivery it will give you a map of the route, the distance to the delivery point, the time it should take and the amount of reward in dollars and XP. You can choose to accept, or close the offer via the green and red buttons.


To upgrade your vehicle approach the green symbol that looks like a pair of crossed wrenches above a green circle in the tarmac that is opposite the yellow doors of the garage

Inside the garage you can upgrade your vehicle in several ways; for example improve the engine, gears, front and rear fenders of the vehicle, the boot/trunk and the paint work. Each of these has several upgrades, each one an improvement on the previous, but to be able to use better upgrades for each of the categories you require more cash and be a specific level before you can use the upgrade. For example with respect to the engine, there are eight upgrades, each of which improves the horse power of the engine. With respect to the gears, the higher the level, the better your gears for example at level eight you can upgrade your gears with ten gears including two reverse gears called a type 154; at level ten you can upgrade to a type ZF-16 with 16 gears. There are twenty paint jobs that become patterned after you attain level 4, such as Winter Forest (looks similar to a displaced pattern army uniform) and Leopard. To exit the garage press the World button or to return to the main menu press the menu button.

Conclusion:
Overall a decent enough survival/truck delivery game; especially for free and even for it's $5 asking price over on Itch.io.

There are a few negatives such as the time it takes for the initial Falcoware splash screen to disappear, which takes almost a minute to complete, also, when moving from the garage back to your truck, it can take several seconds with a black screen, same for exiting other places.

Also, picking up wood so that you can create a fire can be a bit fiddly; you should see a hand appear before you are standing over any wood pile. As soon as a hand appears, press the left mouse button to pick it up. Also, the headlights on the vehicle are really dim, so it's really easy to lose sight the road, or turn offs at night due to it being partially or completely covered in snow; so, I advise avoiding night trips unless you get a night based contract.

I accidentally wandered off the road while trying to get to a place to pick up an order; next thing I found my truck almost toppling over in a depression in the ground and was not able to extricate myself from the place, so I thought I had to restart a new game, which loses all your progress. This may have been because I had the least powered engine with the poorest gears. I'm sure with upgrades the vehicle will perform better, but with the basic vehicle it felt really slow travelling from A to B. I would avoid travelling at night unless it was absolutely necessary. That said, if you get stuck, then leave the game (I used Alt + F4, when you click on the continue button, you'll find yourself near the garage.

The game could do with a decent tutorial at the beginning of the game. There is one of sorts, but it doesn't explain how to survive very well; for example, If you are out of your truck for more than a few moments, you'll notice the edges of your vision look misted up (depending on the outside temperature, this may happen very quickly). This indicates you are freezing (the lower bar indicator also gives an indication of how cold you are' when entering the truck cab or lighting a fire, you'll notice this reduces to zero slowly. If you don't return to your truck, enter a garage or hotel or light a fire quickly, you'll freeze to death and that's the end of the game.

Notes on Security
The installed game is too large to upload to the online security I usually use.