Your task as a truck driver in American Truck Simulator is pretty simple: deliver cargo across the United States and sometimes even Mexico and Canada. The game, which was released on both PC and Mac in 2016, continues to attract a large fanbase thanks to its simplicity.
Transportation sounds dull. But the beauty of American Truck Simulator is how straightforward and effective the game is. The controls in your vehicle do exactly what they're supposed to. You have a fairly quiet business management world to tend to. And hauling cargo across urban and rural regions helps you escape your real life problems.
The key ingredients
The landscapes you see in each game come from incredibly simple tools like Google Earth, Maps, and Street View. Actual truck drivers, bus operators, and farmers get in touch with the games' designers to provide the authenticity needed to make it realistic and effective.
“I play simulators because by their nature they are internally consistent. If you’re playing a game and you’re in a cockpit, and you can’t press all the buttons, that absolutely slaughters the experience for me. But in Microsoft Flight Simulator, you can press all the buttons, and they all do something. That’s SO satisfying, and then you can learn what they all do.”