Crashout Crew Review

Welcome to the vibrant and silly world of Crashout Crew; today is your first day of work at DE NILE SHIPPING as a forklift driver. The thing is, you have never driven a forklift before, but fortunately, Dilly the Crocodile, who used to be the company's mascot, is here to teach you how to survive a shift. He will get you forklift certified in no time at all! Developer Aggro Crab has you working with others in an online co-op team of up to four players to fill orders and get them shipped out to the waiting customers, though you do have the option to play solo. It sounds easy, right?

The controls in Crashout Crew are simple; the game recommends playing with a controller for the best experience. To accelerate and turn, you use the left thumbstick, and if you have to reverse, you use the right face button. The forklift has grabbers that you use to pick up boxes, and you can drift while driving, too. If you drift continuously, you will build up Nitro Charges that give you a Nitro Boost. Time is money, so the faster you can go, the better!

The main part of your job is loading up trucks with specific boxes and then sending off the orders when they are ready. Inventory comes in at the input bay with each box having a picture showing what is inside, like grapes, blueberries, cherries, and kiwis. These will have to get taken over to the delivery conveyor belts to get orders fulfilled and sent out to the waiting truck. Your shift doesn’t have you putting orders together for one truck, but there are at least two that are coming that need to be loaded up; to keep them straight, there is a conveyor belt labelled A, and the other is B.

The conveyor belts to the delivery truck show you what you need to load for the shipment. Once loaded, hit the big button to send it off, but if you mess up the order, you will immediately crash out, so double-check the inventory you loaded. But you will need to work fast; time is money. Getting the order correct and packed fast will earn you a cash bonus, which allows you to buy new equipment from Dilly. If you aren't fast enough and the time runs out, you will be fired on the spot.

The problem is, if you crash into walls or obstacles, the stress bar above your head starts to fill. So as you drive your forklift between the product drop-off and the outgoing orders, hazards may appear in your path that you need to avoid, like boulders, walls, fire, or even magma. Hit any of these, and your stress level goes up, which we want to avoid. Once the bar is totally full, you are stressed out and can't take any more, causing you to CRASH OUT! When this happens, you can't control the forklift at all, causing you to crash into your co-workers or knock boxes and inventory over.

Once the shift is complete, you pick a safety violation you have to deal with: Hardhat Area: earn 200 dollars (the roof has a cosmic hole or five), or Defective HVAC: receive 200 dollars (the air conditioning is broken, and you could fry an egg on the floor, it's that hot!), or, Faulty Wiring, which pays you 300 dollars, but the lights in the warehouse will be acting up, so it’s more challenging to deal with.

You need to complete five shifts, each requiring you to collect one more shipment than the last, to finish your forklift certification. You get graded on each one based on how accurately and quickly your shipments were completed, and an overall score is calculated. It shows which hazards you played and the total amount of time it took to complete. You are then rewarded with things like costumes; I got a big Dilly the Crocodile mascot head to wear. After that task is finished, you will move on to the next job.

There is one super unique thing about Crashout Crew that I haven’t mentioned. Your driver has a cell phone, and if you move the right thumbstick, you will look at your phone and watch videos on TipTap. Like in real life, you can scroll up to watch another video, like it, or share the video with a friend. Be careful, though; if you get busy watching videos, your shift might start and end while you are distracted… This might be something to save for when you aren’t working or you will be out of a job quickly.

In between shifts, you will see the break room here; that is where you can hang out or buy supplies from the CrocShop. You can buy a pine-scented air freshener tree — Aromatherapy — that, with the scent of the forest, makes you calm down and recover from stress faster. For only $150, this is a bargain. I know in real life I could get a pack of 3 for only 4.98 Canadian, but guaranteed they won’t give me stress relief! Every time you go back to the store, the selection of items changes, and sometimes a product might be on sale.

As soon as you start the game, you will notice the cute and vibrant characters in Crashout Crew accompanied by upbeat music. I especially love how Dilly the Crocodile looks hand-drawn in the text boxes when he is speaking with you. You can customise your character and forklift’s look, swapping to a whole rainbow of colours, ranging from red and orange all the way to purple and pink. This isn’t the only thing you can customise; your worker can also wear cat ears, a blonde wig, a baseball cap, sunglasses, or a hard hat.

This reminded me a bit of playing games like Overcooked, where you had a bunch of orders to complete with multiple ingredients required. Ideally, if you were playing with other people, you almost need one person to yell out what is required for each shipment, then have others grab the stuff you need. Which is helpful and saves a lot of time running between the two, as the products are dropped off on the left-hand side of the screen and the trucks going out are on the right.

I am having a blast playing Crashout Crew; my biggest issue is that I would love crossplay with other consoles, and some of the safety violations are very hard to deal with, like the pollen one. Another issue is more of a user error problem; I would accidentally pull out my phone by touching the right thumbstick, and TipTap videos would start playing. There are orders to finish! I don't have time for this! Besides these little things, Crashout Crew is a quirky and fun game that is extra chaotic, stressful, and enjoyable when you play with other people.