Honnnnnk! American Truck Simulator Demo Rolls Out
A moment of zen
I do like Alec's Wot I Think of American Truck Simulator [official site], capturing the calm and gentle nature of hauling goods across the western US. It's a mundane and repetitive game, sure, and pleasant because of that. You can now have a snifter yourself, as developers SCS Software have released a demo.
"The demo is limited by the number of jobs taken and only contains the state of California, but technically it's identical with the game itself," SCS explain. The full game currently also includes Nevada too, and will get Arizona for free later - though extra states after that will be sold as DLC.
You can grab the demo from Steam if you can find where the 'Download Demo' button is. Sometimes I forget how over-crowded Steam's store pages are nowadays. Save files are compatible between the demo and full version, so demofolk can carry on their adventure if it does tickle their fancy.
SCS have also announced they'll soon add exactly the kind of chunky, brutish truck I associate with American trucking, the Kenworth W900. Fact: the W900 is the truck Smokey and the Bandit themesong-singer Jerry Reed drove in the Burt Reynolds trucking classic. It's not the truck Kenworth wanted seen first, though. SCS explain:
"This is actually the very first truck we have started creating for the game over two years ago, it has been in an almost-finished state for a long time. We were sure that this classic vehicle would be received very positively by our fans. However, unbeknown to us, it did not turn out to be the best choice for the first vehicle to approach Kenworth with during initial licensing discussions. Truck manufacturers tend to be very careful about their image, and Kenworth, as the pioneer in aerodynamics in cabin design with their T680, had a rather different idea of the ideal truck to have in our game at the moment of release. So it was back to work for us to finish the other truck first before we could hope for the licensing deal to be successfully signed."
It'll arrive as part of an update SCS say is due "in a few short days".