Cherry Hill

After my dad retired from the military, he was able to achieve one of his actual career dreams of becoming a long-haul trucker. He was gone 6.5 days a week, returning home only long enough on Sunday afternoons to do laundry and fill up with groceries for his small in-truck fridge. It seemed to ask a lot and offer a lot, and the pay was good, but he was never around to spend any of it so what’s the point. Cherry Hill, “a trucking adventure simulator,” feels at first like it asks this much of you. It may have asked more of me than any game I’ve ever played on the Playdate. But the rewards are great.

It’s not the first trucking game on Playdate. I think that title probably belongs to Raccoon Formality’s Heavy Trucking, which I beat on a plane before I ever had my website so never wrote about (it’s good, in a meditative, Desert Bus kind of way). Cherry Hill isn’t nearly so straightforward. You know that scene in Super Troopers where the troopers are going to go undercover as truckers, but can’t figure out how to make the truck move after it’s been turned on? Big trucks are harder to work than cars, and they’re a lot more dangerous on the road. It’s why the testing is so comprehensive and has such a huge focus on safety. How do I turn off the parking brake? What button makes me go forward? How do I put it in reverse? Well, it’s in the manual.

Before you ever step foot in your truck, a huge, leather-bound trucking manual is dropped on your desk. Read the whole thing or you’ll be lost. I was very lost, at first, and I really didn’t want to read the whole manual. I couldn’t get a hang of the steering (you use the crank, but you only go forwards and backwards as far as halfway instead of spinning it around and around to crank the wheel). Was having a weird/bad day the first time I tried to play Cherry Hill and bounced off it so hard. I didn’t know if I’d ever come back. The huge tutorial handbook and the steering was a one-two punch that made me set it down for days.

But I tried again. When I was ready to give it another go (was really looking forward to this one!), I didn’t read the WHOLE driver’s manual at once this time, just the parts I needed to get me on the road. I got a handle on the steering, but still have trouble with reversing trailers (more on this later). I understood that you need to figure out where you’re headed before you leave the gas station, since you can’t be checking your maps on the road. It’s unsafe and also not allowed. I learned to follow along with the CB radio chatter, telling me when a radar-equipped cop or a blown-out tire was on the road ahead of me. I drove through the night and got my cargo where it needed to go, almost safely. (It’s a video game, so “almost safely” is good enough if you’re okay with a small pay cut on your job.) I met other truckers and ate snacks that didn’t seem to have any real impact. The other truckers have more to say to you each time you meet them. I didn’t sleep. It’s a very complex trucking simulator, but there is a limit to how much you can squeeze into the Playdate’s tiny hardware. It’s not as complicated as, say, Star Trucker on the Xbox, but the SPIRIT of the game is as complicated as Star Trucker on the Xbox, if you know what I mean? It really feels like you are a trucker.

The roads are long but at the same time feel like just the right length. The game’s description page says there are around 2,000 scale miles of highway, and I believe it. You can go wherever you want in this sandbox world, meeting other truckers and delivering a specific payload from one destination to another. There’s a story that unfurls slowly and just a little at a time, but it’s mostly told through news broadcasts on the TV and you can ignore it completely if you just want to pick up a trailer, figure out where you’re going, deliver it, then get another one forever. Earn enough money and you can take on more complex payloads by getting a certification, and these deliveries will earn you a lot more money, so you can then get a better certification and earn even more money. The loop is exactly as it should be.

It’s a game that demands your full attention, just like real trucking. A downgrade on the road can make you speed up without even touching the gas (your speed limit for the most part is 50 mph, and seeing an upcoming corner while you’re going way too fast down a steep hill will teach you fear), and sometimes a car in front of you is only going 30 mph so you have to pass it without running into everyone else on the road. The thing that can really make or break you, though, just like in Top Gun on the NES, is the very final part. In Top Gun, it was landing on the aircraft carrier at the end of your mission. Here, it’s backing your trailer perfectly into a loading garage. There are time limits for your deliveries, but for the most part they’re more than gracious as long as you don’t get lost. The time slows to a crawl once you’re off the main road to encourage exploring and safe parking. But let me say this: backing a trailer into a garage is one of the most difficult things you will ever do on the Playdate. You need to center yourself emotionally before you can center your trailer physically. With no real time limit for parking, it’s just you vs. you. You can do it! But not at first, absolutely not. You’ll sometimes look a bit like Austin Powers when he tried to turn his vehicle around in that little hallway.

The truck always seems to pull a little to the side, Desert Bus-style, even when you get your wheels repaired to 100% by using some of your meager early-game earnings. You have to refill your gas tank and get oil changes. It’s got a sort of more-complicated Densha de Go-ness to the whole thing, and I’ve always loved Densha de Go. Sometimes you run over something that was left in the middle of the road because you’re a giant truck and can’t see it coming, or sometimes you’ll jacknife your trailer while reversing, or you’ll drag the side of your truck down some gas pumps. Maybe you’ll speed a little and the cops will send you a ticket. But lots of these little indiscretions are forgiven if you get your delivery where it needs to go, on time.

The whole thing feels very zen (not you, parking section), and it will absorb every drop of your focus as you carefully try to haul a trailer of Playdates from one place to another. Please don’t leave it in a parking lot somewhere. There’s a lot more sandbox to explore.

(Released September 16, 2025, on Catalog. Copy provided by developer.)