Ice Truckers is an open-world truck sim that might as well be a horror game judging by the levels of anxiety this frigid screenshot is giving me

As the truck sim genre becomes increasingly prolific, new entries have gotta do something special to stand out. For Ice Truckers, it’s all about the most nightmarish weather conditions you could ever expose an 18 wheeler to.

Ice Trucker has you hauling loads across an open world inspired by the Arctic. Dynamic weather will bring you against conditions like snowstorms and blizzards, and you’ll have to get your rig across ice roads and snow drifts to reach your destination. The devs tout realistic driving physics, so it seems like these won’t just be visual tricks, either.

Look, honestly, there’s no way of telling if Ice Truckers is going to be any good or not without actually playing it. Truck sims – even the good ones – are often low-budget affairs from microscopic studios, and the good and the bad are separated by razor-thin margins. But even with that caveat in mind, I’m fascinated by the amount of anxiety I’m getting just looking at these screenshots.

Seriously, just zoom in on that 18 wheeler driving across a road that’s been turned to a literal sheet of ice. This is the stuff genuine nightmares are made of, especially given what appears to be the edge of a river along the side of the road. The local government needs to throw some salt down and issue a travel ban, because this is awful stuff.

The vibe is similar to something like SnowRunner, but SnowRunner is a very slow-paced game about getting stuck in the mud and working your way back out. But if you run a big rig like the one in that Ice Truckers screenshot into the river, it’s game over, man. If Ice Truckers is the unlikely thriller that this early promo material suggests, it could be a standout in this crowded genre.

Truck sims are getting scary – they’ve added the Oregon Trail to American Truck Simulator and I think it’s a horror game now too. 

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