Courier services are what get the co-op carnage overhaul in CarGo! This is a 1-4 player couch co-op game that asks players to take on 16 maps that all need various packages delivered to their final depot. Players are couriers to houses, but instead they are shipping raw materials to different factories. Over the course of the game, the production chains will require players to work together to drop the right raw materials at the right factories, to produce the end goods to deliver. Will you be up for the task?
CarGo! is isometric and has a clean, crisp, playful town design. Players can drive on or off-road, but most factories will have an in and an out loading bay. Collect raw materials at the out section, and deliver them either to the end yellow depot for cash (which translates to your score) or to the next factory to create a new product. For example, you’ll have glass and wooden timber factories that need a parcel from each to create a window at the window factory. Some deliveries will ask for timber, some will ask for glass, and some will want fully built windows. They stack up like orders on the top left of the screen, and players will need to coordinate to deliver the orders as fast as possible. Players get a cash bonus for consecutive, quick orders, and the bonus runs on a countdown timer per order. If you can get ahead of the game by utilising the fact that each player can carry two things at once, the chaining of deliveries can get you an easy 3-star rating on a level. However, CarGo! puts lots of things in your way to stop you…
Aside from your own skills of driving and navigating increasingly small and narrow roads in larger isometric cities, CarGo! has a selection of traps for you to avoid. Police will chase you if you pass their station at high speed, although their AI logic is quite poor and they often crash before becoming an issue. Road works pop up regularly at specific road sections of each level, blocking your path. If you are driving over the area when they arrive, you lose your cargo and respawn at random somewhere in the city. There can be several of these at once, and when paired with draw bridges, there are times you are genuinely stuck with nowhere to go for ten seconds. The other big obstacle to overcome is the train. The second half of the game has a train arrive multiple times in a level, chopping it in half. The only way to get the train to move is to deliver coal to the engine, and when the train leaves, it’ll drop various raw materials as thanks. Sometimes, this can speed up your deliveries, but occasionally it will stop you dead in your tracks. To combat this, CarGo! introduces tunnels that let you jump from one side of the city to another, navigating around the trains if you need to.
During my playtime with CarGo! I was able to 3-star most levels in single-player mode and 2-player modes on the first attempt. Where the game becomes more frantic is when the production chain to make a product involves two layers of creation. At that point, you are having to think about a mini-automation loop, as well as all the traps the game throws at you… and only 4 minutes to get points on the board! I played 2-player mode with three other people, and we all remarked that our scores were hugely dependent on the order of deliveries. Sometimes, you’ll get a run of very basic deliveries, and that cranks up the bonus meter and rakes in the money and points. If you are unlucky enough to get three or four very complex deliveries up front, you might be waiting 2-minutes before you get the first points on the board. The scores did seem to scale quite well for the number of players, though, even if the delivery-dependent outcomes would sway the end result. We also commented that later levels were harder to navigate because of how small the cars were. There is a little arrow that helps clarify the direction a car is pointed towards, but it wasn’t hard to get lost in the visual noise.
Everyone enjoyed CarGo! but didn’t think it was a top-tier couch co-op experience. It’s cute, definitely chaotic, and requires memory, driving skill, and observation to succeed. Sometimes our ultimate success felt a bit out of our own control, and into the luck of the trap and order generation. I’d still recommend it, but just with the caveat of taking some deep breaths when the game feels like it’s trapping you beyond your control.
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