Cargo Commander. It sounds like the sort of self important handle I might have referred to myself with back when I played the space MMO Eve Online. Ah, those were the days; stick the ship on autopilot, make myself a brew, read the latest Andy McNab novel, deliver the goods, job done. Yet Cargo Commander shares very little in common with such tranquillity… except the space setting, and the brew… and I guess you might be able to replicate that inner peace with an incessant swearing session (just press the F key).

Cargo Commander plays out more like a day in the life of that guy from Alien. You know the one: the engineer; he's very fond of his cap, sick of being screwed over by the company, and is the first to have his brains munched on. But at least now he can rest easy knowing that caps are finally receiving their due appreciation, serving as Cargo Commander's much sought-after currency.

So, the deal: your new space-home is situated twenty light years from all forms of entertainment bar country music, emails from your wife and a coffee-machine (boasting +20% speed, seriously). Suitably bored yet? Then you might as well get to work.

This first involves turning on a magnet. Soon enough a massive space container comes crashing into your home. Initially equipped with your drill and nail gun, you voyage out in search of precious cargo.

The first haul is always relatively simple. You find your way in, hop on a couple of platforms, drill through a few walls, collect the cargo, return home and deactivate the magnet. That last bit, from here on out it won't be relevant. The next time you activate that magnet you will be greeted with five or so maze-like containers, more often than not chock-full of slavering mutants. As you can imagine, this makes your job a fair bit more time consuming, not least deadly. In fact it tends to consume just about enough time for you to discover that this space-magnet technology ain't all that stable; it invariably opens up a wormhole intent on greedily dragging the containers and their cargo back to where they came from.

The moment the container you're in disintegrates you are faced with two immediate difficulties: 1) a lack of oxygen; this may cause a slight shortness of breath, 2) the cargo you couldn't reach in time is now floating out into the nothingness of space. See where this is going? For me, this situation results in either an act of defiant heroism or a motionless body forever floating through cold space. Succeed and the breathless dash back home, greeted by the comforts of music, coffee, and seeing your score edge ever higher, might be my favourite aspect of Cargo Commander, but there's so much more to love.

Cargo Commander has to be one of the funniest games I've ever played. It employs a similar brand of gallows humour to Portal 2 but unlike other attempts(Penumbra: Black Death) the comedy fits the ridiculous-cum-fatal gameplay like a glove. Dare I say it, Serious Brew's comic concoction seems more natural than even their peers. For instance, after scraping just enough to pay for one of many delivery fees (seemingly subject to hyper-inflation), our hero receives a crude, cutesy picture drawn by his son. N'awwwww, wait what are those faint words on the other side of the paper? “EVICTION NOTICE”. Your family's grim situation couples tragically hilariously with your lowly job collecting cargo, most of which is of equivalent worth as an old boot to a fisherman.

Once you've survived a few cargo hauls, hopefully scavenging enough caps to spend on a few upgrades, you're presented with the chance to McNab (crap review in-joke alert) yourself a 'sector pass'. Or, in other words, your ticket outa this hell-hole. Destination: another hell-hole. Only by snatching these green-glowing boxes can you progress through Cargo Commander's 'story', which essentially revolves around climbing the greasy corporate pole from Deckswab Trainee to Boss by collecting new types of cargo. So it's fairly annoying when you miss a sector pass, and it is in this context that the game invites you to abuse your F key and bask in the ensuing profanity uttered by your character.

Say, however, that you do manage to grab that sector pass, well here's the interesting bit: Cargo Commander's sectors are randomly generated based around a name, so you could either compete for high-scores in the currently popular 'Moon' sector or head to 'Rotherham' as I did. I've heard it's the new Berlin.

Quite frankly it's always phenomenal when a randomly generated game plays this well. In this way, Cargo Commander shares a good deal in common with FTL, including what some may regard as its faults: Cargo Commander can be a pretty tough game. Still, the bar for story-based progression isn't set at an unreasonable level and even in death you often make a good deal of progress. Moreover, in spite of its comic appeal, fundamentally, motivation is not derived from any strict narrative but from the enjoyment of the gameplay itself.

Importantly, and it is here that Cargo Commander exceeds itself, it is the sort of game that rewards clever play in the face of adversity. Running out of ammo and faced with a slew of mutants? Drill through the container hull and try tempting those idiots into deep space by playing the human carrot. Too many obstacles between you and your cargo? Hold your breath, float your way around the outside the container and drill yourself a new, convenient entrance!

So it's settled; not to be confused with the likes of Euro Truck Simulator 2, CargoCommander's space-faring search for cargo is immediate, action-packed and, on occasion, quite sweary. As for my cargo commanding career, I'll do my son proud yet, and with some luck I'll keep my measly high score on 'Rotherham'. Hopefully no one else knows its the new Berlin.