Controller support works no problem for me both with the steamdeck onboard controls and also with a gamepad when my steamdeck is docked. The game has premade bindings for controller that display onscreen and honestly driving with a controller gives you a massive advantage over mouse and keyboard given how subtle the vehicle handling is and how much easier it is to make smooth subtle adjustments with a controller.
There is a demo so you can see if it works for you.
I’m looking for a game with realistic handling where I can race down some roads with traffic.
Totally the right vibe for this game, just start out doing taxi jobs, turn on accepting urgent passengers and turn off accepting comfort passengers. Now you have a point to point racing game on roads with AI traffic (and also human players if you play online).
The starter taxi car doesn’t have crazy acceleration but go into your options and turn off all the steering and driving assists and put the car in sport mode and the car opens up a lot since the assists are there to help you drive calmly.
Still an early access game but the driving feel is just so good and you the customization of vehicles is so flexible that I don’t really care, it is a blast already. Also, jobs like delivery truck jobs might not usually be timed but the more jobs you do the more money you make… so even the jobs that aren’t framed as racing jobs you can totally treat like a racing game and soup up your delivery truck with an absurd engine.
The only job you can’t treat like a racing job is bus driving since you have to arrive on schedule and not too early (you can have AI drive bus routes for you while you drive a different car tho). Every other job you can just punch it and drive like an absolute psychopath. Think of it as a racing game about racing all kinds of different vehicles (wanna make a semi into a giant drift monster? You can do that) not just sports cars.
I tried the demo, and I’m gonna be honest it ain’t for me
The gameplay is fine, but it’s the UI, controls and stuff letting it down. Its not very polished. Probably just early stages of development.
I had a frustrating start, trying to drive a broken vehicle for about 10minutes. I even googled why I couldn’t start the engine. (No luck) Then I got out and saw the icon indicating broken car. Yeah it’s me being dumb but a well built game would think of this and help the player if they’re trying to start a broken car
I stopped playing after about 30mins, the initial frustration used up too much of my patience
I may give it another chance in about a year or so, when it’s more polished and maybe out of early access
Also some of the controller glyphs are quite difficult to see on the deck, looks all jagged
Yeah I think you found a vehicle for the towing job that is purposefully broken down to make it a challenge to tow (I.e. the right front tire is totally flat so you have to lift the front with a winch for the tow). You only start with one vehicle (stinger) but there are various blue vehicles around you can drive for free to do jobs in exchange for a cut of your profits. Any vehicles you see with a yellow icon labeled “rescue request” on the map are vehicles intended to be recovered with a tow truck. You can get in them to “drive” them but that is just to facilitate repositioning them in order to help get them hooked into a tow truck. You cannot just get in and drive random vehicles in this game unless they are rental vehicles labeled with a blue icon.
Sorry you had a bad experience, it is definitely early access, I normally never recommend early access games it’s just there aren’t really any fleshed out alternatives of open world driving games with realistic physics and a large open worlds that even remotely try to do what Motor Town does, not to mention in a low poly graphics style well suited to lower end devices like the steam deck.
Yeah there are open world racing games, but that doesn’t really get at the vibe of Motor Town with all the vastly different kinds of vehicles and jobs all happening together at once. The closest peers like Forza or Beamng just don’t understand the basic gameplay loop of why Motor Town works so well, so while you might be able to get somewhat of a similar experience to parts of Motor Town elsewhere, even at this stage of development I think Motor Town provides a really unique fun that for a certain type of person is going to be an extremely addicting experience.
Some people will try the Motor Town demo and think “this is just all grinding driving jobs for money” and hate, people like me will have the same reaction and absolutely love it for focusing on that.
Controller support works no problem for me both with the steamdeck onboard controls and also with a gamepad when my steamdeck is docked. The game has premade bindings for controller that display onscreen and honestly driving with a controller gives you a massive advantage over mouse and keyboard given how subtle the vehicle handling is and how much easier it is to make smooth subtle adjustments with a controller.
There is a demo so you can see if it works for you.
Totally the right vibe for this game, just start out doing taxi jobs, turn on accepting urgent passengers and turn off accepting comfort passengers. Now you have a point to point racing game on roads with AI traffic (and also human players if you play online).
The starter taxi car doesn’t have crazy acceleration but go into your options and turn off all the steering and driving assists and put the car in sport mode and the car opens up a lot since the assists are there to help you drive calmly.
Still an early access game but the driving feel is just so good and you the customization of vehicles is so flexible that I don’t really care, it is a blast already. Also, jobs like delivery truck jobs might not usually be timed but the more jobs you do the more money you make… so even the jobs that aren’t framed as racing jobs you can totally treat like a racing game and soup up your delivery truck with an absurd engine.
The only job you can’t treat like a racing job is bus driving since you have to arrive on schedule and not too early (you can have AI drive bus routes for you while you drive a different car tho). Every other job you can just punch it and drive like an absolute psychopath. Think of it as a racing game about racing all kinds of different vehicles (wanna make a semi into a giant drift monster? You can do that) not just sports cars.
I tried the demo, and I’m gonna be honest it ain’t for me
The gameplay is fine, but it’s the UI, controls and stuff letting it down. Its not very polished. Probably just early stages of development.
I had a frustrating start, trying to drive a broken vehicle for about 10minutes. I even googled why I couldn’t start the engine. (No luck) Then I got out and saw the icon indicating broken car. Yeah it’s me being dumb but a well built game would think of this and help the player if they’re trying to start a broken car
I stopped playing after about 30mins, the initial frustration used up too much of my patience
I may give it another chance in about a year or so, when it’s more polished and maybe out of early access
Also some of the controller glyphs are quite difficult to see on the deck, looks all jagged
Yeah I think you found a vehicle for the towing job that is purposefully broken down to make it a challenge to tow (I.e. the right front tire is totally flat so you have to lift the front with a winch for the tow). You only start with one vehicle (stinger) but there are various blue vehicles around you can drive for free to do jobs in exchange for a cut of your profits. Any vehicles you see with a yellow icon labeled “rescue request” on the map are vehicles intended to be recovered with a tow truck. You can get in them to “drive” them but that is just to facilitate repositioning them in order to help get them hooked into a tow truck. You cannot just get in and drive random vehicles in this game unless they are rental vehicles labeled with a blue icon.
Sorry you had a bad experience, it is definitely early access, I normally never recommend early access games it’s just there aren’t really any fleshed out alternatives of open world driving games with realistic physics and a large open worlds that even remotely try to do what Motor Town does, not to mention in a low poly graphics style well suited to lower end devices like the steam deck.
Yeah there are open world racing games, but that doesn’t really get at the vibe of Motor Town with all the vastly different kinds of vehicles and jobs all happening together at once. The closest peers like Forza or Beamng just don’t understand the basic gameplay loop of why Motor Town works so well, so while you might be able to get somewhat of a similar experience to parts of Motor Town elsewhere, even at this stage of development I think Motor Town provides a really unique fun that for a certain type of person is going to be an extremely addicting experience.
Some people will try the Motor Town demo and think “this is just all grinding driving jobs for money” and hate, people like me will have the same reaction and absolutely love it for focusing on that.
Yeah. This is definitely a game style I want, but I’ve been spoiled by the driving and controls polish in games like Saint’s Row.