I can take or leave a majority of Death Stranding’s story (BB forever, though), but I gotta give it to Kojima: delivering stuff is fun. There’s a genuine complexity to the process of deciding what to pack and how you pack it, making the simple act of delivering something like a pizza legitimately challenging. So I’m quite tickled by the look of Pinetrail, a much less apocalyptic delivery game where you drive a tiny three-wheel rickshaw truck transporting packages across luscious forests and mountains.
Pinetrail is obviously a lot more subdued and calm than Death Stranding. There aren’t strange, invisible creatures out to get you (just unstrange, visible ones, I’ll cover that), and you don’t have to hoof it everywhere. Where in Kojima’s take, you generally place all your packages on your back, here you place them in the back of your truck, tying them up semi-securely with rope. You’re able to stack your deliveries pretty much however you like, which I’m sure the anal among you will have a field day with.
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The landscape is still challenging to get around, however. There’s no tarmac roads, only steep hills, and rocks can fall at you too, not to mention hoards of package-stealing boars (the aforementioned unstrange visible creatures). You have to be careful not to knock yourself about too much, as too much strain on your rope can send your packages flying.
Oh, speaking of flying, you can do that too! Quite literally, your truck has the ability to pop out wings and go soaring across the landscape. It’s silly, perhaps, but certainly useful. Your truck has other nifty features too, like a hookshot you can attach to trees to pull you up some of those steeper paths, and a boat mode that lets you sail up river streams. Quite the advanced bit of kit you’ve got in this game it seems!
It does also seem that you earn money for completing deliveries, and that you have to do a certain amount of them, though what a bit of cash and accomplishing your targets gets you I can’t say. But the game does look like quite a pleasant time! There’s no exact release date attached to it just yet, only a Q2, 2027 release window, but you can wishlist it on Steam in the meantime.