CarGo! Review

Do you dream about having a job delivering and picking up packages? When you imagine driving around the city, what kind of music would you be listening to? If your answer is upbeat jazz, then you are in for a treat! 

CarGo! has a control scheme that is reminiscent of classic games, making it feel like you are driving a toy car. Accelerate with the right trigger, reverse with the left trigger and steer using the left thumbstick. Pick up a package with the bottom face button and drop it with the top one. If you ever feel the need to honk your horn, use the left face button. There are power-ups for your vehicle that you can pick up, like a battery that will increase your speed so you can pick up and deliver items faster. The right shoulder button is assigned to something called blink. If you ever lose track of your vehicle, hit this button and a pulsing circle will radiate from your truck so you can find it on the screen. 

Before jumping behind the wheel, you need to select a colour for your delivery truck. There are eight different hues to choose from, fortunately, they aren't similar to each other, so you don't confuse them with another. If you are playing multiplayer, each person needs to be a different colour; you can't be the same. 

To learn how to drive your delivery truck, you begin with playing a tutorial where the first challenge is to drive to the glowing checkpoints on the streets around the town. The tasks you need to complete are shown at the top of the screen, the products shown need to be taken to their destination to complete the outstanding order. The faster you get the item delivered, the more money you will earn. The controls in CarGo! are easy to learn, so you will be on the road making deliveries with ease in no time.

After completing the tutorial, you head to Stage One. Here, your first task is to pick up crates of ore from the area labelled “OUT” at the mine and deliver them to the “IN" area of the Main Storage location. After multiple deliveries, the task changes to picking up ore and taking it to the factory so that it can be smelted. It takes a few seconds to complete, so you need to be patient. Once done, pick it up and deliver it to the Main Storage once again. Your truck can carry two packages at the same time; they can be the same type of product or different. Once the package is delivered, you will get paid. 

You have three minutes to complete as many orders as possible. When time runs out, you will see a stat snapshot giving you a star rank based on how much money you earned. You get one star at $90, two stars at $180, and three stars when you reach $300. The best part is if you are playing multiplayer, the money that each person earns is pooled together making the challenge a little more manageable.

Your score is the total amount of money you earned, and you can see how it compares to that stage's current high score. If you think you can do better, you can try again; if you are happy with your result, you can move on to the next area on the overworld map. This also lets you go back to any previous level you had visited before.

As you progress, you figure out a few tricks that you can use to your advantage. Like you can drop the packages anywhere on the street, allowing you or someone else to pick them up again later. This is helpful when you have tasks for a variety of products, but one isn't currently requested. It can be saved for when it is needed to fulfil an order. 

A red highlight warns players that a roadblock is going to spawn there, and an emerging block destroys all vehicles on that space, so make sure you aren’t on that spot when it pops up. If your vehicle is destroyed it will respawn in a few seconds. 

When you begin a new level, you are shown an overview of where you will need to go to complete the required tasks. Sometimes, you will need to use alternate routes to get to the spot you need to pick up or drop off at, drawbridges are up, or roadblocks may appear, blocking your route. Random vehicles driving around always seem to get in your way, fortunately, you can just push them out or drive over top of them. 

Multiplayer is where the madness occurs. You will need to plan out what everyone is doing well to be successful. If you don't, it's a mad dash to grab the items before your opponents get there, and it gets tricky to get enough stars to complete the level. It's not very helpful if the raw materials aren't being taken to be processed, holding everyone else up and delaying deliveries. 

When the time is up, all the players get a title. My son loved to try ramping over the drawbridge when it was opening but managed not to time it right and fell into the water multiple times, so he got the Wannabe Diver title. All the delivery trucks racing around to complete the deliveries was fun; we were having a great time trying to clear as many of the levels as we could in an evening. Having to work together reminded me of titles like Moving Out!, where you can’t be successful on your own. It was a nice change to not battle against the other players.

As you progress, there are more goods to pick up and deliver like: screws, tools, and smelted ore. Later, you will need to make a sofa that requires wood and smelted ore to be delivered to the factory to create the furniture. We had one person calling out the product orders and when there was a lull for one product, we were stashing items on the street until they were needed. It reminded me of playing Overcooked. 

The visuals in CarGo! are a little simplistic but work very well. The delivery trucks are a bright colour and the streets and buildings around them are more subdued, making it easier to keep track of your vehicle. Each location you are picking up and dropping off at is clearly labelled with one side saying IN, which is where you leave the items, and OUT, where you pick up products to be delivered. 

Once you get to level five, there are police stationed here, and instead of trucks, you are driving race cars. You are still making deliveries, but this time, you are picking up raw clay to be made into pots. With the police hanging around, if you speed past the police station, you can get a ticket; this will take money off of what you have made. It was a unique thing to include in the game, even though it is very frustrating to get ticketed!

CarGo! is a charming and challenging game, especially when you play it with friends. It will take some strategising and teamwork to be successful in getting all the products to the places they need to go. I found it quite hard playing solo when you reach the later levels, as there is a lot you need to do to be successful. Having someone there to help with the deliveries was a huge help. This title is worth adding to your list of party games to check out with your friends and family… if you think you can work together.