For a while, it felt like couch co-op experiences were going the way of the dodo. Big publishers seemed less interested with the emergence of online play, and almost abandoned them completely during the eighth console generation. The indie scene has endeavored to pick up the slack, offering smaller, budget titles that have the flexibility to experiment with unconventional concepts.
This is the situation CarGo! finds itself in, with players working together to deliver packages across a variety of stages. The Memory Leak Games team was clearly inspired by the excellent Overcooked, but their efforts lack the charm, content, and polish of similar titles, sometimes resulting in frustration.
Gameplay is rather simple: you and up to three friends control delivery vehicles, attempting to bring various goods from one building to another. In a few stages, you may need to craft materials at certain spots in order to create new products, then rush to deliver them so you can earn a time-based bonus.
Unfortunately, CarGo!’s controls prove to be a sticking point. The developers made the choice to only allow steering left and right with the stick, while forward momentum is controlled by the right trigger. This means you can’t intuitively point the stick in the direction you’d like to move; instead, you must pay close attention to the direction your car is oriented so that you know which way an input will actually send the vehicle.
There’s something to be said about how this unorthodox control scheme can result in accidental mishaps when playing with others, thus increasing the fun factor. However, I just don’t feel that stance holds up to scrutiny. Genre contemporaries like Overcooked also delight in causing chaos amongst friend groups, but that chaos is based on how strenuous it can be to complete objectives together, not because the game makes awkward control decisions. It feels like CarGo! doesn’t believe enough in itself, like it can’t be fun without making things more difficult for the player. This is unfortunate, since it does a great job of introducing new gameplay quirks throughout the short campaign.
And it is short. You’ll make your way through the 16 levels in a few sittings. I spent much of my playtime as a solo deliverer (sad, I know) and my PS5 playtime reads 2 hours. While the core CarGo! experience can be fun, you won’t be coming back to it for very long, owing to the lack of content. This game is begging for procedurally generated levels ensuring endless replayability, but alas, there are none to be found.
There are a few additional annoyances worth mentioning. My car would sometimes get caught on geometry once in a while, forcing me to start a level from scratch. When I went to restart, I would be met with a black screen, the HUD superimposed on top. Thankfully, pausing and restarting again fixes this with little issue, but it can be annoying when one bug forces you to contend with more, creating an irritation feedback loop.
CarGo! is not a horrible game, but it ironically seems to be lacking the goods offered by similar projects. It makes for a fun (if frantic) night with friends, but the dearth of content likely prevents it from being a staple at any game nights.
