Building an entire game around using cranes sure is a bold choice by Saber Interactive. It’s not exactly the most thrilling concept, and even in slower paced sims like Roadcraft, shifting stuff with a crane was always one of the elements that drifted into “painfully slow” territory thanks to the difficulty of manipulating the crane arm while dealing with camera controls and perspective issues. However, the demo of their upcoming game Docked shows that picking stuff up and putting it down somewhere else can actually be quite thrilling, when you inject a bit of danger into the proceedings.
The demo lets you work your way through a set of 4 missions across 3 different types of crane, and one of the biggest surprises was that there’s actually a narrative running through it all. You play as Tommy, who is returning to work at the dock when the ship Pathfinder runs into trouble at sea and returns to port in a spot of bother, with shipping containers everywhere and hazardous materials at risk of seeping into the ocean. You’re thrust back into the exciting world of crane operation as you work to clean up the mess and prevent further damage. It’s not going to win awards for the story, but hearing the chatter on the radio helps remind you you’re not alone out there (even if it sometimes feels like it).
Your first mission takes place nearly entirely on an STS crane. I’m not going to pretend I know what that is, but it’s basically one of those humongous dock cranes you’ll have seen in other games like GTAV. You control Tommy in first person as you board the crane and get ready to start cleaning up the mess Pathfinder has left. Just getting to your seat on this crane is a mission in and of itself though. This isn’t just a case of pressing X to climb aboard, you’ll need to physically climb onto the crane, find the control panel to activate the lights and then navigate a spaghetti junction of walkways, ladders and elevators as you locate different control panels to send power to the cockpit before you can make your way there and start doing some cranin’. It’s honestly huge, with some areas even locked off while the boom is up, but it helps immerse you in the world, and crossing these walkways surrounded by thunder, lightning and rain really sells you on the jeopardy of the situation.
Controlling the crane itself is closer to what you’d expect. I’m not really sure how to describe it without it sounding incredibly dumb, but (as you’ll have guessed) you’ll be raising and lowering the crane to pick up containers and move them to safer drop off points. The complexity comes from your viewpoint: you can play the game in first person which is great for immersion but does make it tricky to see what you’re doing at times. Luckily there are a few additional camera modes that give more visibility of the crane itself, and there’s an excellent HUD on offer too. As you lower the crane you’ll get visual indicators that show you how close you are to the ground and how aligned you are with your intended cargo, so you can manipulate the crane into the right position before engaging the locks and picking it up. It’s an elegant system and keeps you from trying to eyeball distances which could prove frustrating.
The following missions use the same format but across different machines. You’ll use a reach stacker, which is more like the mobile cranes you find in games like Roadcraft, to zip across the port moving containers from one bay to another. A lot of time is spent manipulating the arm of the crane and lining yourself up before collecting your cargo, and while it’s fun using a different machine, fundamentally you’re not actually doing anything different to the STS crane in the first mission. The same applies to the final missions Straddle Carrier, which again features the same set of mechanics but on a tall, thin crane that you position directly above the cargo containers. Once the novelty of a new machine wears off, you’re left doing the same thing you’ve done for the past 3 missions.
This is my main concern with Docked: it does crane gameplay well enough, but is it going to be enough to sustain a full campaign? There may well be more machinery and objective types that don’t feature in the demo, but I’m not sure yet if it’s enough to hold my interest, or if it works better as a component in a more varied game. Still, between the smooth handling and attention to detail in the machines you use, there’s a lot to like about Docked and I look forward to seeing more.
Docked is coming to PC via Steam.
