Here’s a horror food truck survival simulator we didn’t know we needed in our lives. It just launched on Steam and is by indie developer CosmicDev.

Wasteland Bites is a simulation game (and it’s it’s only £5!). You have to manage the day-to-day running of a very rundown food truck, all whilst you serve an often decapitated, slobbering mass of hungry/maniacal monsters. Think you can handle it?! Well, this one is bags of fun.

Serving and Shotguns in Wasteland Bites

This one is like a combination of the Playdate icon Mars After Midnight (2024) meets the icky Space Warlord Organ Simulator (2021). Except in this one you have to be great with timekeeping and food prep (helps if you’ve worked in a bar/pub/restaurant before).

We put our 2008 experience of working in a Manchester city centre Wetherspoons to good effect here.

In Wasteland Bites, you’re the new employee at a food truck. It’s your duty to look after the truck and its many little quirks (shorting circuits, rats, snarling dog packs etc.) whilst prepping food for monsters. The monsters queue up outside the truck like polite British people, but can get nasty on you.

That’s why you have a trusty shotgun handy to sort out any fisticuffs. It all plays out like this.

There’s a free Wasteland Bites Demo available on Steam if you fancy giving this a go. Well worth it, as we’ve had a lot of fun with this game. You can’t argue with £5 really, especially given how fast-paced the action gets.

If you think you’re in for a boring time of it serving zombies, there’s so much to juggle at once it gets very heated.

For example, you much judge if you’re dealing with a deceptive customer and whether to shoot them dead with a shotgun, all whilst batting away rats on your food, then honking at some stray dogs outside the truck, plus the power might cut off during a making of raw garlic and meat on toast. Your characters gets stressed, too, so make sure he/she gets a cigarette on the go.

The cigarette protrudes out of the screen in classic greasy spoon café fashion, which does flag up the charming nature of the concept, its pixel art, and punchy pace.

Wasteland Bites is lot of fun! Although it can get a little repetitive, across the three hours or so of gameplay that’s not a big deal, as this is perfect pick-up-and-play escapism time.