The latest Trucker 2056 demo update D0.1.18, released today, brings the most significant addition so far: an entirely new roguelike game mode called Gauntlet. In it, you pilot a pre-made character through escalating combat encounters, loot resources, recruit party members, install biochip upgrades, and refit your truck between fights.

If you reach the end of the scenario, your score is based on the resources you still have, both money and scraps. Scraps are converted into money using a ratio based on your character’s final Barter skill. This means you have to learn the fights and consider all of your purchases carefully. And for those keen on speedrunning, there’s also a separate leaderboard for best times!

Even if I say so myself, the Gauntlet mode turned out quite good. It’s always fun to try to figure out combos and optimizations to improve your scores. There’s no tutorial, though, so first-time players might want to visit the main game, now called Campaign, before diving in. Of course, there are still the usual help screens for Gauntlet and other parts of the game, which can be easily consulted.

While Gauntlet mode isn’t a narrative mode, there’s still a story to each Gauntlet scenario. The Gauntlet also allows a nice way of showing glimpses of side characters’ backstories and maybe even some events of the Campaign from different points of view, though not necessarily all canonical.

My rationale for creating a new game mode was twofold. The initial idea came from realizing that demoing a dialogue-heavy game like Trucker 2056 is quite hard, especially at face-to-face or booth events. No one has the patience to read through multiple dialogue screens or immerse themselves in stories and characters in a setting like that. A combat-focused game mode would help showcase the game, and it would also add replay value to the game as a whole.

The first sketch of the game mode was done in a weekend, the main coding in a week, but as usual, the devil is in the details, and adding the Gauntlet game mode ultimately ended up being a significant detour for me. I even had to drop out of this fall’s Steam NextFest and push the release of the Early Access from late 2025 to spring 2026.

But ultimately I found the delay justified. Creating Gauntlet allowed me to focus on combat, think about the scaling of enemies and equipment, make combat more fun, and also fix some gnarly bugs related to AI, deck reshuffling, and scrapping cards. Going forward, it will also work as a great testing sandbox. Not to mention it’s just plain fun to freely and creatively remix assets from the main game.

With Gauntlet now released, the framework of the game is quite solid, in terms of both design and code. This means I’ll finally get to tell the story and introduce all the characters and locations I’ve been itching to bring into the game for months. And I also finally get to focus on the core gameplay loop, which will be the topic of the next Trucker’s Logbook entry.

Until then, stay tuned, Merry Christmas to those celebrating, and please consider subscribing to Trucker’s Log 2056 to get updates straight to your inbox. You can also follow Trucker 2056 on Bluesky for more updates. And remember: we got ourselves a convoy.

Cheers,
Lasse Rintakumpu
Trucker 2056 designer and developer