The Last Taxi
When a fatally wounded member of an anti-technology cult leaves you with what appears to be an undocumented infant, you’re thrust into a dark network of secrets – unravelling a conspiracy that could shake Progress Point to its core.
The Last Taxi is a narrative-driven adventure game set in Progress Point, a politically and economically-divided sprawling metropolis that has fully embraced automation and human modification, creating a satirical and somberly-surreal vision of the future.
You’ll meet a diverse cast of passengers, each with their own tailored conversations. Be drawn into morally challenging decisions that lead you into the heart of a dying society.
Narrative Gameplay:
As a taxi driver, your job is to keep passengers comfortable, happy and generous.
Or not?
How you interact with passengers is up to you! With varied dialogue choices and multiple endings, you can choose to keep the tips rolling in or spend all your time insulting them.
But keep in mind, gaining their trust and listening to their problems is a lucrative side business. As per Progress Point’s governmental regulations, all taxis are fitted with sleek, handy, and mandatory listening devices – for uhh… quality assurance.
If your passenger expresses something that isn’t quite above board, you can quietly report it to the authorities for some side cash. Choosing to let some shady business go unnoticed does have its perks, though. And with over 80 diverse characters to chat with, you’ll see all kinds traveling the city.
The World:
In the future, you got what you asked for – Flying cars! Unlimited time for hobbies! And the ultimate hybridization of human and machine! Or was it just flying cars you wanted…
Too bad automatic driving cars are all the rage.
Regardless, life in Progress Point is going pretty great. As the only standing city, we survived environmental and economic collapse because no one from the past changed their small, but destructive habits.
Status quo reigned and we’re the societal afterbirth, filled with various factions that believe in one kooky thing or another, like free will.
Oh, but that makes it sound so bleak. Really, there is a bright side.
No one needs to work anymore! The brunt of the workforce has been given to automatons …Well, unless you personally didn’t harbor a vault of cash before the collapse. If you’re one of the unlucky ones, you’ll still need to find some way to make an income, pay the bills, and find your niche in a world run by automation. As a human, you’ll just have to be creative and think outside the processor.
Features:
• Earn tips by navigating through 80 treacherous, quirky, and haunting choice-driven passenger conversations.
• Aid and abet criminal passengers, help them reconsider their actions, or report them to the authorities.
• Upgrade your taxi with new tools allowing for hijacking cargo, hacking toll booths, enhanced customer experience and more!
• Maximize fares by managing malfunctioning equipment, avoiding environmental hazards, and keeping your passengers comfortable.
• Experience a rich and detailed world of technological headquarters, mountaintop temples, sunken metropolises and pirate-infested underworlds.
• 10 hours of gameplay with 20+ unique choice-driven endings.
Game Discussion
Steam User 36
The Last Taxi is great for those who love narrative gameplay.
As someone who loves a good story and a more relaxing VR experience, I think this is great. I'd rather be able to play through a well written story than a story wasn't really there in a game that is more action based. That's really just personal preference.
I know a lot of people are disappointed that you can't "drive" and are wondering why they made it a taxi and not just a desk, but if you were only at a desk, you wouldn't be able to see all the different places that you can take passengers to in the broader world. I don't think "driving" was ever the main point of the game, the tag line is "Conversations at the end of the world" which seems to be the core aspect.
There are definitely some performance issues and this isn't a perfect game (I'm not sure that even exists) but with the first patch out, I'm confident that they're working on getting those issues fixed.
All in all, this has been pretty good so far and I'm looking forward to seeing how it ends!
Steam User 28
The game was quite fun, some may say it's boring as you cant drive, but this was never meant to be the main game play loop. The game is more similar to the style of papers please, and is just a game of choice and story. The game is a easy and relaxing game to play for a quick seated round of vr to relax and have a chill play of. The characters are interesting, and there are plenty of little things to do and learn such as safer and easier routes, and the type of people are bound to do what. I have NOT finished the game yet, but the story and world building so far have been very enjoyable, and you actions do effect the world, even the side characters have some effect. Now I must say that it isn't perfect, the money quickly becomes trivial, and there is a bug of the desk not being anywhere near where you are standing, but the bug can be fixed by pressing the reset playspace button in steam vr. Also, the main console in any location is always adjustable.
An afterthought is that this game is quite intensive to the computer, and the initial load time is long, but otherwise it has yet to crash on me yet
Steam User 23
I think that there's more to this game than people are realising. It might start off slowly but that doesn't make it bad. Its been an ok experience so far but the important thing is the story. Here's my first hour of gameplay and I'll be uploading more gameplay tonight or tomorrow.
Steam User 13
Full review HERE:
This game is what it says it is. It's a narrative story game where you drive an automated taxi around your decaying society having bought a taxi company from the last human taxi driver. What you DO control are methods to protect and avoid dangers while your taxi drivers humans and bots from point A to point B.
Your goal is to NOT damage your taxi, while listening to the people or bots you are driving around and keeping them happy.
The happier they are the higher your fare. The higher the fare and the more money the make the better a "license" you get and the "nicer" the areas you can taxi in.
Yes, the game adds more controls and a little more to do as you progress in the story but your main goal is to shape the world you want to "taxi" in. Every customer you talk to could potentially change your world by how you answer their questions and treat them. This is a very interesting concept for a game and I really enjoyed that part.
I would say it's weakest points are it's lack of textures in the graphics and the fact that I lagged (while recording 2560x1080 / 60 frames) with a 3080. Besides that, I would say many people have stated they would like to DRIVE themselves around instead to which I can understand and agree. A future option for that would be amazing.
7/10 CURRENTLY because of optimization issues but it does have unique gameplay and an incredible voice cast. If you are looking for a narrative game with consequence dialogues, look past the current issues and get it!
Steam User 14
All i can say is im glad i purchased and downloaded this game on my quest 2 i am having so much fun playing the last taxi. what i like most is the feeling of sitting in a cab with all kinds of controls ( im glad the driving is auto pilot} here i am thinking i got it all under control and here come falling rocks or a slow car ahead lol, keeps me busy on my toes and oh yeah keep the passenger happy for a nice fat tip. only thing is work on the graphical issues because my game be glitching and it makes my cost of driving the taxi go up because i cant control the taxi if the game is slightly glitchy. other than that please add a home for our taxi driver and a place to unwind after our shifts lol, Im so happy to have found this game on the quest 2 because its a different genre of what i usually play of running and gunning and it helps me relax just chatting with the passengers and watching hazards to make the most money. please continue the updates to this hidden gem and keep up the good work im really thrilled about this game!!!!
Steam User 1
TL;DR: I think overall this is a game I would recommend (barely) but there's some serious caveats and you should get it on a good discount (don't pay more than $10). (Steam needs to add a Neutral rating.)
The Good
First, the negative reviews are generally just people misunderstanding what the game is and that's an unfair reason to give a negative review.
Let's start with why I'd recommend it. The writing is decent and interesting. There's a good mix of characters and a surprising variety of ways you can handle situations with what you choose.
I think I'll address some bogus negative comments from reviews here:
"You can't control the taxi!" I actually like that you can't control it. Early game it might not be interesting but, as time goes on, you will be struggling to micromanage everything going on while still processing what the customer is talking about and responding. There've been a couple moments where I missed what a customer said because I was dealing with 2 or 3 things at once.
"The voice acting sucks!" Actually I didn't have any issues with that. What do they even expect? I thought there was a good variety and the quality of voices were perfectly fine.
"The lip syncing is bad!" No sh*t, Sherlock. It's a cartoon. How do you not understand this? Is your home under a rock, Patrick?
"It's no fun. People just babble on." Yeah...that's the point of the whole game. Maybe if you played for more than 30 minutes you could actually comment on the quality of the game.
The Bad
Here's some minor flaws that can be forgiven:
The initial load into the game is painfully slow and bad. It's just a black screen for a long time then a loading bar...sometimes frozen and sometimes just fast. It's really just an annoyance but it's potentially related to something I'll mention later.
The range of adjustment is limited and grabbing the move handle is often awkward and requires me moving my chair. (I play seated.) This is tolerable for me because the range is fine for me but someone commented on this in the negatives and I think it's a fair critique.
Some dangers are literally unavoidable like a gate you can't hack because the taxi is too fast or a hazard that is at a location you teleported to. Not game-breaking, but very frustrating.
The laser pointer for the device that hacks toll booths and bots for money does not always properly display its laser (parts of the game overlap it).
There will be times when all you can do is repeatedly hop around looking for customers and you will at some point at least once just be transporting crates. It'd be really nice if there was a more clear map that tells you at a glance where you should go to avoid this.
The Ugly
Here's what's really bad--almost unforgivable--about it:
The game is very likely abandoned for the following reasons (If I'm wrong I'd really appreciate the devs fixing issues I mention in this review.)
The last updates are fluff pieces and sales.
Bugs I see in negative reviews are still existant today.
The half-baked endings. The first ending I chose had a character model stretched out in a graphics bug. The second had no text visible but I had a feeling I was supposed to be seeing epilogue text. The third (and fourth) were a similar path but only gave end credits...one I really wanted to hear more about. I then did an ending where the person left my cab and made a long speech while I stared at nothing of interest--just the usual default stuff around that site. (I didn't see him or anything relevant...just heard the speech.)
Something is wrong with the physics/hitbox of the shield ball/taxi. A lot of the time, it will bounce off an invisible wall and either activate late (falling to the ground usually) or just phase out of existence and never activate. I have taken so many hits because the shield ball didn't work properly. I started throwing it up into the ceiling.
I have occasionally had to restart the entire game because I suddenly see a black screen but the game is still running. (Sound familiar?)
The calibration for where the taxi console/dock is will reset EVERY F'ING DAY! Every single shift starts with unlocking the dock and reaching awkwardly down to drag it back into place where I want it.
I had a bug that required me completely restarting my game: When I picked up Obbie, I wasrobbed for 3000. Now normally, I assume this is a one time thing (otherwise the devs are jerks) but, in my case, I was forced to pay 3000 fee every single day. This led to my game being utterly unplayable. I had no idea when I'd earn 3000 in one day so I restarted. Deleted the save. Created a new game. Figured I'd do the tutorial because I forgot how the vials worked (turns out just how I expected). However, in the tutorial he says he threw my license to scan but it's not there. I'm also showing all the stats from the deleted save. Long story short, I set everything to 0 in a config file and saved it to finally able to play again. (I don't think most people would figure that out.)
The guidance in the game is so bad. The tutorial is a nice introduction and I quite liked it but then you're left to the wolves with new stuff added in but no proper explanation of how it works. Just quick-scrolling descriptions. Still don't think I know how to use the scanner properly. The worst offender is a big spoiler: the final nanny options for the baby are mods. This might be explained in the text--I don't recall--but I had the impression that this was a very expensive permanent robo-nanny and thought nothing of it. I bought it early as possible to try to save money. Instead it removed gameplay and left me with endings I didn't want.
With all that said, I do recommend this game (barely). Just probably get it on a discount and have very low expectations. I bought it on discount for about $8 and can easily say I got that value from it. Is it worth $20? No. In its current state I'd say this is a $10 game at best. If devs decided to prove me wrong (on it being abandoned) and fix everything I said, and make proper endings as well, then I think it'd be worth $15 or $20. There's still achievements to get and maybe replaying the story to try to get different endings but if they're as pathetic as the ones I got, I don't know if I want to bother. I liked that there were a variety of endings and I could easily load back but they really left me feeling nonplussed.
Edits: I have no idea what is going on with Steam and/or this store page. The formatting with lists isn't showing? At least not on my end. Sorry if it looks like a rambly wall of text.
Steam User 12
Uber is Gone, but The Last Taxi is Here
The Last Taxi is a unique taxi VR driving sim, where you don't drive the taxi, but focus on the customer. You will still do things like use the wipers, shields, record conversations, avoid pay tolls and more. But where the game really shines is, on how you interact with each customer. You have to really listen, if you want to build on the story and unravel different endings.
You are the last human cab driver in a future city, starting in the slums. The game is heavy on the narrative story side, with a good side of sim. As the last human cab driver, we must use are human abilities to listen and care on conversations with meaning. Something a automated droid cab can't offer. You will spend time listen to customers conversations and responding back how you please. You can listen to their stories and reply back making them happy and building your star rating. Or just be a rude get in and out of taxi kind of person, the choice is yours. All these choices will lead to 20+ different endings.
The game is not just story driven though. You will also level up your taxi license, to unlock new areas to serve. You can buy things to pimp out your taxi, and improve your fare.
I had a great time playing this game, and really enjoyed both sides of it. Its a VR experience that was not in my library yet, and am happy it is now.
Watch my preview here,