Purchase a copy of Car Mechanic Simulator 2014, out on Steam today, and you know you’re getting the market leader.
“This is the very first game simulating a car repair workshop,” write publishers PlayWay. “There‘s no competition for our product, and in the nearest future there won’t be any.”
Once the laughs subside into curious throat noises, though, you’ll find this is a game build with the zeal and application we’ve come to expect from specialist sim developers. In development at Polish outfit Red Dot Games since 2011, Car Mechanic Sim features a 75 mission-strong career mode about refitting sedans, limos and SUVs.
The Spring will bring free DLC, beginning with offroad cars. PlayWay say community response has already been clamourous enough to merit work on iOS and Android versions of the game. So see Car Mechanic Simulator 2014 now, before it hits the stadiums.
In career mode, you’ll be required to order, repair and mount (steady) hundreds of car parts, and be told to do repairs to engines, exhausts and suspension, as well as a variety of things I’m told are real jobs mechanics attend to – chip tunings, interims and diagnostic paths.
You’ll fiddle about with towncars, compacts, sedans, limousines, sports cars, vans and SUVs, all of which will have at least 100 intimidating car parts to wrongly remove or damage. Outside of career mode, free play’s random orders ensure an eternity of turning vehicles into static hulks.
I was expecting something along the lines of Surgeon Simulator’s good-humoured calamity, but this demonstration suggests something tonally closer to the relaxing Euro Truck Simulator – a meditative series of gently-connected parts and turned screws:
The first-person fidelity of the thing is quite alluring, I must admit. Is this genre-first for you, do you think?