It is safe to say that we are firmly in the grip of a post-apocalyptic nightmare. The zombie subculture has infected swathes of the media and it almost feels like there is no escape from the dreich grey disasters. With the release of Gunman Taco Truck, it looks like Romero Games has served up a little more flavor to this drab genre. This is our Gunman Taco Truck review.
Out now on Steam, Android, and iOS, Gunman Taco Truck is a roguelike adventure that takes players on a taco driven adventure across a radioactive wasteland. In an effort to escape the fallout of a nuclear hiccup a heroic purveyor of Mexican food must manage their resources, battle mutants, and drive their sturdy taco truck all the way to Canada. The brainchild of Donovan Romero-Brathwaite, the son of Doom legend John Romero and Wizardy’s Brenda Brathwaite, this title began with a moment of inspiration for the 12-year-old and eventually grew into a ridiculous tongue in cheek jaunt across America.
Gunman Taco Truck is a game that clearly sets out to make an impression. The opening screen is a boisterous flash of cool retro colors that are clearly influenced by 16 bit games of old. The quirky cartoon facade is well matched by a decidedly B movie plot and Dren McDonald’s offbeat Mexican mariachi soundtrack. This retro aesthetic, the offbeat menu full of mutant meat, and even the corpses of your suffering patrons belie the grim surroundings of a middle American wasteland.
A brief opening tutorial precedes the mutated meat of this game. Players taking on Gunman Taco Truck are expected to travel from town to town, blasting mutants, trawling the tarmac for resources, and feeding the local residents. While conceptually simple this is an adequate example of a resource management game. Flitting between towns is a side-scrolling adventure on a three-lane highway full of radioactive mutants, roadblocks, and raiders. If you cannot navigate around these problems by switching lanes, then fully automatic weapons are another option. Blowing away zombies, mutated catfish, innocent road signs, and bandits allow players to loot a number of resources. Tasty taco fillings and scrap metal are littered throughout, and while this experience isn’t exactly complex things can get a little intense as monsters, body parts, and loot litter the lanes.
Once the taco truck reaches a particular destination, a whole new set of resources start to impact the family business. Cash is the most obvious. Cash is earned by opening up shop and selling tacos. This feels like it is almost the most important part of the game, filling crispy shells to customer satisfaction, referring to the recipe guide that bounces around the corner of the screen, and managing stock levels. Meeting customers expectations, and crafting tacos in good time, can result in great feedback, well-fed citizens, and lots of tips. Fail to meet customer expectations, take too long, or even run out of stock and you’ll find customers abandoning you and even dying of hunger. This can severally stunt your cash flow and make managing these stock levels essential. Ingredients are purchased, using cash, from stores that exist in several towns. Roguelike elements mean that each game can distribute these shops differently and each town may not have the same ingredients available. Good planning and a pen and paper are essential to ensure you make enough profit to fill your gas tank, before the dash to safety.
Scrap metal serves as a second currency allowing the family Taco Truck to be upgraded. Once again auto shops are distributed across middle America, stocking a randomized variety of spare parts, weapons, missiles, guns, and even a new truck. This provides at least a little progression to the game as players spend time planning their escape. While the number of modifications here is fairly limited, it does make life on the road a little easier as you roll over zombies and reign custom hellfire upon mutant monstrosities. The fairly simple, if somewhat hectic, trip between towns makes scrap metal, and the progression system, feel a little secondary to cash. Still, the controls are responsive and when a huge mutant spider starts crawling into view, that new gun is going to seem pretty handy.
These control systems are satisfyingly consistently and uncomplicated in Gunman Taco Truck. Almost every interface relies on point and click controls, from shooting monsters on the road, purchasing new parts, or creating Tacos for customers. It means that Gynman Taco Truck translates very well onto both iOS and Android platforms also. Additional little touches like the customer tips, audible reactions, restaurant reviews, and even patrons that die of hunger give the whole experience of serving tacos a real charm that had me coming back for second helpings.
Despite the charming aesthetic, Gunman Taco Truck is not entirely without challenge. Managing stock levels, cash flow, customer satisfaction, and gas levels is where the game starts to become a little more challenging. It continually forced me to retread the opening towns of the game, building up a sufficient cash flow to make a dash for freedom. This isn’t a particularly complicated tactic and Gunman Taco Truck isn’t a particularly complex game once you work out how to beat it. There is limited longevity to this format, simply because it has a win and failure state, but it is absolutely worth your time. If you are sick of ghastly grey post-apocalyptic nightmares hen it might be worth spicing up your taco with Romero Studios’ latest creation.
Note: Our PC copy of Gunman Taco Truck was provided by PR
Compare to: FTL, other Roguelikes
Overall Score: 8.5/10
Pros:
- bold and quirky aesthetic
- easy to get into but has some depth
- wonderful soundtrack
- Tacos!
Cons:
- limited replay value for a roguelike
