Car Mechanic Simulator 2021 is a fun way to live the life of car mechanic as close as you can get from a video game. This game was released in 2021 as the name suggest, developed by Red Dot Games and published by Playway S.A. Its previous iterations were launched in 2018, and 2015 respectively. Ever since the CMS 2021, no new game has been released in the series. Recently, they put this game on sale and that’s where I picked this game for cheap, how cheap you may ask? ₹286 cheap and for a game at that price I have already spent 34.2 hours on it. Don’t worry if you missed the sale, this game often comes on sale along with its DLCs.
Now, before I start, I want to make it clear that this is not the CMS 2021 review, I am not going to view any technical aspects or limitations of this game through critic lens, even though I point them out. This article is more of how I make my own fun in this game.
Gameplay Aspects
If you are a person who knows little to no about Cars, but interested in knowing more about it, CMS 2021 is a perfect start for you. CMS 2021 cuts a lot of usual fluff that many simulators throw upon you, like: balancing your personal life, taking and repaying loan, unnecessary survival accepts, etc. It put you right into the foot of mechanic who just started with his mechanic shop in middle of nowhere and your job is to take repair jobs and work on it.
Repair Jobs
There are two types of jobs available in this game: Stories missions and AI generated jobs. Story missions may or may not advance your progress depends upon your play style. I do play story missions because of the fun descriptions they come with, but I do it rarely. Other than the story missions, you have randomly generated repair jobs that leveled with your skills that you can do to make money. I switched to buy my own cars from Junkyard and repair it after a certain level.
In conclusion, the no-BS aspect of this game makes it stands apart from many shovel-ware simulators available on Steam. But no game is without their limitations. In regard to CMS 2021, the game relies heavily on radial menu instead of having some quality-of-life related features. To starts with, in-game menu doesn’t have option to exit the game, radial menu controls your part mounting and unmounting, lack of any sort of inventory management beside letting you add/retrieve items to/from workshop. Luckily for us, a QOL mod is available to download for free of cost. So, let me talk a little about it since I highly recommend you start your gameplay with it.
QOL Mod
CMS 2021 QOL mod will give you plenty of features that can make your life pretty easier specially with shortcuts and some menu changes. Not just that, it also replaces all the name for cars and engines to their real-life counterparts. The game allows you to mark any part that you need to buy from their marketplace, once you bought that part, it stays in your shopping list. QOL mod will handle the shopping list management on its own. It also checks if the part is already in your inventory, along with the condition of the part.
You can skip the minigame that required while repairing parts and balancing wheel, this requires you to make adjustment in the configuration file. However, I do suggest you play this game with the mini game enabled. Some of the features I thought were already in the game, are added by the mod: Lathe repair machine repair drum brakes, stripping the car available on junkyard, and ALT to switch “part mount” and “part unmount” mode.
Since it is a simulator game, its entire gameplay revolves around the Credits and XP. In order to upgrade your skills, you need XP that you generate through repair job. Your fund will help you upgrade your Garage with new repair mechanisms. Some of your jobs comes with “Bonus XP” and “Bonus Credits“. However, once again, the economics is not tracked through any dedicated mechanism, all you have is a summary screen that shows how much you made through a repair. You don’t get any mod to track your finance, which means if you are interested in keeping track of your expense and profit, you need to do it yourself (DIY baby 🥵).
Keeping Track of your Profit and Expense
It is easier to track when you are fixing cars from the random offers, than the one you are fixing to flip. You have to manually track everything to make your own strategies for the next car, or to keep track of the parts that a certain engine requires, to estimate the cost of making an engine from the scratch.
For early game, you can capture screenshot of summary pages for each and every car. The difference in amount between the last car you save with the price amount of what you had before the repair will determine your net profit. It’s not required by any means, but you can have it have an idea on how much you made on a job.
The strategy will stale with time, specially once you start repairing your own car. For that, you have to manage your own suite. As of now I have setup my screen like this:
I also take screenshot of engines so the next time I have to work on the same engine, I will plan my strategy accordingly. For example, If I have to work on I6 OHV engine again, I will keep track all the repairable parts, check the rest whether they are inventory or buy it if I have to.
It looks super serious, but it is fun that way. Completing repairs without any tracking make it looks like another cozy job simulator game that you can play on podcast, which it is to be very honest, but I like in that way.
The other plan I have is to strip down the junkyard bought car for internal parts, replace/repair the cosmetics, weld the body and sell it for any profit it makes, repair the engine parts, brake caliper, or any other repairable part and keep it in inventory.
Well, you can have certain degree of liberty on how you want to play this game, despite this game being very simplistic in nature.
Ending Note
In the end, all I have to say is I highly recommend you this game if you are interested in playing a role of car mechanic in video game. In-fact, this is The Car Mechanic Simulator game available on steam, not just the best among other. I still have a lot left to experience in this game and once I hit the mark where the game has nothing new to offer me, I will made another article giving you a full review of Car Mechanic Simulator 2021. Till then, have a great day and enjoy spilling oil on your garage floor.
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