Drive a truck filled with explosives across horrible terrain in this gnarly mix of Snowrunner and Baby Steps—inspired by one of Hollywood's most misunderstood films
Film sickos will instantly recognise the inspiration behind Nitroglyerine! which sees you drive a truck filled with volatile explosives across terrain more rugged than Glen Powell's chin. Its rough and ready demo oozes with the same the lo-fi tension of William Friedkin's Sorcerer, a nihilistic thriller that was critically panned and buried at the box office by the runaway success of Star Wars, but has been (rightly) reappraised in subsequent years.
If you haven't seen Sorcerer, I strongly recommend you check it out. But in the meantime, you can think of Nitroglycerine! as a mix of Snowrunner and Baby Steps. The playable demo skips the surprisingly long setup of Friedkin's film, planting your straight in the cabin of a snorting, grunting '70s flatbed loaded with a single crate of pure liquid concussion. You're then tasked with navigating a twisting morass of slippery, crumbling dirt tracks with nothing but a crude map and nerves of steel.
You get three trucks and three opportunities with which to complete the journey, while gas stations you pass serve as checkpoints. In my initial run, I only reached the first checkpoint before blowing all three trucks to kingdom come. The challenge partly comes down to the fact that your driver has foolishly neglected to secure his load for the journey. This means the crate slides around the flatbed like a bar of soap, creaking and cracking with each nudge and jostle until the deadly bottles contained within are exposed to the open air.
Mainly though, it's tough because your truck is fundamentally unsuited to the obstacles placed in front of it. Even a moderately steep incline must be taken with the precise amount of speed to ascend it, otherwise you'll end up backsliding down to the bottom. You can use the handbrake and the truck's turbo to better control such ascents, but pushing too hard risks stalling the engine entirely, or hitting the summit with so much momentum that you rattle down the downslope with fatal consequences.
And that's just a hill we're talking about. Nitroglycerine! isn't shy about putting nastier obstacles in front of you. Rickety wooden bridges, hairpin turns placed at the edges of precipices, massive boulders that take up half the road and cliffside tracks that crumble away beneath your tyres. It's a game that constantly makes you wince at the path ahead.
Nitroglycerine! already has a thrilling core, that much I'm certain of. The question is how much more the experience will have to it outside of the demo. This lets you play one of what seems to be two maps, while the full version will also offer a "free ride" mode that will presumably let you blow yourself up in more liberal fashion.
Developer Avoidance says on its Steam page that Nitroglycerine! is designed for "quick sessions", so I wouldn't expect it to be a Snowrunner-scale affair when it launches. Nonetheless, if you've found Saber Interactive's recent vehicular output to be too light on the driving challenge, Nitroglycerine! could prove the kick up your tailpipe you've been looking for.
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