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Embracing the mucky melancholy of SnowRunner

J
Jordan Oloman
10 พ.ย. 2566
There’s a watchtower in Michigan that I keep on driving to, even though I know I don’t have the fuel to make it there. This sounds like an ominous recurring dream, but my plight is anything but fictional. Lately, I’ve been booting up SnowRunner to drive trucks with my friends, but my goldfish memory always compels me to pick the same target when I leave the garage. And sure enough, after a half-hour of serene plodding through meticulous mud fields while catching up with my co-op partners, I crest the same little knoll, and my engine switches off, leaving me stranded in the middle of nowhere.

It was frustrating the first time, sure, but I’ve begun to find a certain solace in the monotony of SnowRunner’s fateful journeys, and it's worth exploring. This is a game where I can spend an hour achieving nothing and still have a great time. SnowRunner plies you with engaging missions where you can earn prestige and truck scrip for clearing hazards and building bridges, but for me, it’s the off-grid explorations and cross-country favours that linger in the mind’s eye.

Maybe you’re pulled into refuelling a capsized cargo carrier, or winching a mate out of a watery stall. There will be long-term benefits, but in the moment, you’re reacting on goodwill to a veritable Disneyland of environmental perils. More often than not, you’ll get yourself stuck in the process, which compounds the problem—but if you’re anything like me, you’ll be rubbing your hands together at the prospect instead of lamenting the literal sunk cost.
Embracing The Mucky Melancholy Of Snowrunner Mud
SnowRunner is Death Stranding for car nerds, but let me level with you—I can’t even drive. Yet if you tell me that your fuel trailer is four feet deep in fetid bog water, I’ll be there in a pinch with the right powertrain for the job. What I’m gathering from my time with the game is that the archetypal stuck vehicle seems to summon an innate reaction in us, and SnowRunner relies on this brilliant human impulse, spinning it out into a simulator where you’re always helping someone out.

You eventually graduate to intimidating areas like the Siberian "Drowned Lands," which are Souls-ian in name and nature, swapping eldritch bosses for perilous hill climbs and icy lakes. But when you’re not on the job, and it’s just you and the unpredictable road, SnowRunner takes on a weirdly profound quality. I thoroughly enjoy switching on the HUD-reducing Immersive Mode, sinking into my muscle memory, prowling around beautiful British Columbia, listening to the comforting hiss of my truck’s brakes, and appreciating how Saber Interactive has paced a good swamp.

It's not quick or easy to level up and earn truck money, and I don't think I'll ever finish SnowRunner, but I always find myself gravitating towards it when I need to relax. Delivering an IKEA’s worth of cargo through acres of memory foam mud doesn’t sound like the most cushy gig in the world, but once you’ve fallen in love with SnowRunner’s sticky systems, it’s hard to escape the call of the bog.

SnowRunner is available on the Epic Games Store.