Trucker's Logbook
Trucker 2056 Roadmap
October 24, 2026
Trucker 2056 Early Access Release Candidate 1 hit its final playtesting yesterday. The release candidate is already extremely stable; this playtesting will focus entirely on game balance, mechanics, and improving the gameplay so that Trucker 2056 is even more fun to play. Meanwhile, I am also working on several graphics updates and some final pieces of actual game content that will land in Early Access. There is also some focus on the game's difficulty.
Currently, the game is balanced so that it gives me personally a nice challenge when playing on Ironman (i.e., not saving during the campaign). I've considered this the sweet spot, as it means that more casual gamers can still enjoy a tough but fair challenge if they're willing to do some saving and loading. But we'll see what others think. The game might become easier or harder depending on the feedback.
Blacktree, A Trucker 2056 Story
September 15, 2035
The shipwreck, the docks, the man at the fireplace with his lost dog — all of those were left behind. There were only the ruins, an outpost or a castle once upon a time, and the fading sunlight of an autumn eve. At a pedestal amidst fallen debris, a spyglass on a tripod was fixed on the horizon. Through its singular eye, one could barely see the island: walls rising from its craggy outline and, in the middle, a tree, alive and writhing, yet pitch-black and devoid of leaves.
The kitchen flooded with sunlight.
“Time to wake up, Kurt,” a man in his seventies, dressed in a tawny brown three-piece suit, said chirpily. An outfit distinctly out of place in these parts of the country, even in this time. He pulled up the remaining shades, walked to the coffee machine, and turned it on.
Introducing the Gauntlet Mode
December 16, 2025
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!
Feature Completion & Festivals
September 21, 2025
After fifteen updates consisting of new features, content, and bug fixes, the demo of Trucker 2056 is now feature-complete. This means all the features of the main game are included in the demo, though many are content-gated and will only be available in Early Access.
The final feature added was crafting. In Trucker, each piece of equipment adds a unique set of combat cards to your deck, determined by your character's abilities. With crafting, instead of spending money, you can construct items using scrap metal alone. This feature becomes available once you gain access to the garage in Resistance HQ. Crafting also allows you to select which of an item’s cards you add to your combat deck, limited by your machinery ability, adding a further neat deck-building mechanic to the game.
Trucker 2056 Demo Release & Road to Early Access
June 16, 2025
The demo of Trucker 2056 was released at the end of May, right on schedule, and is now available on Steam for both Windows and macOS.
In the weeks following the initial release, I’ve shipped a series of patches fixing bugs, resolving animation issues, and adding quality-of-life improvements. Now at its sixth update (D0.1.6), the demo is almost feature complete, meaning it already contains most of the systems and mechanics of the full game, making it a solid foundation for building the rest of the content later this year.