Ok, before you start thinking that this is a terrible game, its not. It has all the prerequisites of all the simulator games similar to this. It's relaxing, sort of tedious, but quite fun in a sense that you get to see progress as you restore the tank.

HOWEVER, here's the thing. The game is called "Tank MECHANIC Simulator" but it doesn't really emphasise the mechanic part. Imagine this scenario:

You find and extract a WW2 era T34-85 that has been swallowed by mud and dirt. The tank is in horrible shape and has probably been submerged in the mud, abandoned, for at least 70 years. The tracks are missing, some suspension parts have disappeared, the engine is waterlogged and almost every part of the tank is corroded. How would you go by restoring this thing? Well we'll bring it back to the shop, remove the rust, sand blast it, prime it and repaint it. Corroded armor plating? Just remove the rust and repaint it! Chassis and hull rusted to the core? Just remove the rust and repaint it! Waterlogged engine filled with grit and dirt, an engine block probably rusted to the core, and piston rings that have completely rusted and deformed? No problem! Just pull out the engine whole, remove the rust, and sand blast it! No need to disassemble and rebuild the engine! Good as new! Mint condition at 100%!

What I'm trying to get here is the game isn't realistic. Well... not as realistic as I would have liked it to be. Most of the restoration process has been way oversimplified. For parts such as the armored hull and chasis, I understand that it might only have rusted on the surface and can be easily restored by removing the rust and repainting it, but the engine of a tank is a lot more complex than the hull of the tank itself. Rust removal and sand blasting it without even disassembling it right on the engine crane is not gonna magically fix the engine. I would have wished that you could disassemble, restore, and rebuild the engine like you do in car mechanic simulator but apparently I'm not allowed that experience, and yes this is the main reason I wouldn't recommend the game, because It feels more like a spray and paint simulator rather than a tank mechanic simulator.

Tank Mechanic Simulator is a bit of a misnomer for this game - a better title would be Tank Restorer Simulator, as your job is to restore tanks, not really fix them. The game has very little in the way of auto mechanics: you don't tune engines or test batteries or hook up wires or anything like that. If you're worried you might not know enough about tanks or auto mechanics to play this game, don't: it's VERY dumbed down. Actually, it's dumbed down to the point of absurdity.

So, your job is to dig up old WWII tanks and restore them. Sounds pretty interesting, at least until you see the lazy job the developers did implementing your job. Each tank part has a condition, from 1% to 100%, and that condition is caused entirely by rust and faded paint. Nothing else can possibly be wrong with it: it can't be broken or warped, for instance. So, when you get a tank to renovate in your workshop, the first thing you do is wave your magic rust removal tool over all the rusted parts on your tank. It will remove most of the rust from multiple parts in just a few seconds! Once that is done, you then wave your magic sandblaster tool over all the parts again, and in just a few seconds, your tank's parts will be a shiny-ish steel color (even the seat cushions, somehow). At this point, all these parts are considered "repaired" and will have 100% condition. Now all that's left is to spray them with primer (which dries instantly) and then spray them with paint. Your paint gun is also magical in that it can spray multiple colors at once and it is impossible to paint a part the wrong color. This is where you also learn that batteries, headlights, taillights, tires, treads, and seat cushions in WWII tanks were actually all just painted on. Your tank was probably also missing some parts, so use your computer to order those parts online (cause I'm sure there's an online part store for obsolete WWII tanks) and reattach them. Occasionally, due to a dev mistake, the parts you need won't be in the part store, but don't fret: in the tank analysis screen, there's a button that enables you to buy all the missing parts for your tank in one click (at 1.75x regular cost). So you can delight in paying a little extra to get the parts you need that the developers forgot to make available.

Once your tank is fully restored and reassembled, you can do a number of things with it. You can take it to the paint room (once you unlock it) and give it camo, decals or just a different paint job. I gave one tank camo, and upon finishing it, I noticed that the headlight was also camo-ed (sigh).

If you don't want to paint it, you can pour fuel, oil, and coolant into the engine and then take it for a test drive (once you unlock the track). This part is admittedly halfway decent. Or, you could take it to the proving grounds (again, after unlock), where you can drive AND shoot. This part was also fun.

Finally, you can put the restored tank into your own little tank museum, and then charge people to look at it. This feature turned out to be pretty cool, actually. At max (after unlocks), your museum has space for 8 tanks, and each tank slot has multiple informative displays that you can choose from. There are also various display cases where you can exhibit any small firearms you come across as you excavate tanks, and you can arrange the firearms in each display case as you like. The best part to the museum is that it generates passive revenue for you every 10 minutes or so. Even just half filled, your museum will generate enough revenue (as long as you make ticket prices reasonable) that you no longer have to take "repair" contracts just to get by: you can spend ALL of your time restoring more tanks for your museum which means more money for you.

Oh, I should also mention the music. By default, the game plays generic but appropriate music for working on a tank. However, your workshop also has a radio. DON'T turn the radio on. It's the same playlist every time, and it starts...eh...okay, but it very quickly descends into a number of eerie, haunting and/or soul-shriveling tunes that will slowly sap your sanity - especially as you disassemble a nearly finished tank to find that one, tiny part that your sandblaster somehow missed stuck behind 20 other parts. You have been warned.

So let's start off by saying that yes. I do play this game a lot. I've played it quite a bit in fact. But can I recommend it? Ehhhhh.... no.

See, the developers have made a great system for this sort of game. I wish more games would use it. It's a bit unrealistic, but that's honestly okay, it plays well with it. I have to give them props for that.

However.

What I can't give them props for is quality assurance, general professionalism(There was a major content delay because they forgot to fork their build. FORGOT. And overwrote their work), and what appears to be a roadmap designed for maximizing profit, rather than fixing the countless issues that still persist with the game.

Parts will regularly remove themselves backwards, bolts will regularly screw in from the wrong side on some models, the phase between Rust Removal and Sanding for engine blocks just.... doesn't exist, causing asset snap in jarring ways, parts that are clearly intended to be removable just aren't from some tanks, the hammer just... doesn't work at all on some parts even if there is no dependency there when it comes to removal, the randomization for new tanks is borderline nonexistent sometimes, and there are wild differences in complexity between some models... Not in the actual model, but in parts. Some of the newer parts have you installing individual con rods, while previous tanks don't even have a visible space for a piston or rod to even exist.

And now they're talking about paid DLC.

Honestly, if this company wants to be taken seriously, what they should be doing is putting a firm halt to ALL new developments, and going through one by one, of each model presently in the game, and retooling them from the ground up. Put one model of each, fully rusted, in each workshop bay, fully deconstruct it with all methods(by hand, by hammer, by grinder), then fully step through each phase of reconstruction, taking note of where bolts go(on at least one tank, part of the wheel assembly's bolts screw in to literally nothing), what direction parts mount and dismount, whether or not part removal properly happens, the list goes on. You know. Quality Assurance. The thing that every developer in the world has figured out, barring maybe CDPR.

As it stands, even if you didn't do that, and that's enough for me to give your game a fat No, you still have major bugs in your game right now. Achievements are just... not pinging for the newer tanks at all, the museum is not large enough to accommodate all of the tanks(Even before the last two content patches), and on occasion, a bug will pop that will cause parts to just... float... in the wrong place, with a half-removal phase floating where they SHOULD be. To say nothing of the frame rate drops whenever welding holes in a tank, or removing ammunition from the inside of a tank.

For a game with so much polish in some things... this game desperately needs to be polished. And given the developers seemingly focusing 1000% on the content patches so they can speed their way into paid dlc, it reeks of them just... not caring about the quality of their product anymore, and I cannot support that.

JULY EDIT.

So the game has indeed improved, the developers seem to have delayed downloadable content in order to iron out some bugs. But there's an emphasis there on Some. While some of the more egregious bugs have been sorted, there are still consistent issues with parts "removing" or "Installing" backwards(i.e. passing through other objects to appear or disappear in place, clearly reversed on an axis as to what direction they're Supposed to appear), bolts that seem to be backwards, or in some cases, screw into nothing at all due to parts not aligning properly, parts that are clearly made to be removable that aren't removable at all, an entirely unpredictable radius and depth of tools, bullet holes in the newer tank models that reappear after a reload when welded up, a complete lack of consistency on tank parts(Wherein one of the newer engines is so ridiculously over-detailed that it's tedious, while some other engines are so Under-detailed that it's hard to see them as anything short of comical), a sometimes frustrating mechanic of screwing or unscrewing bolts(The screwing action requires the mouse to follow the bolt as its held down, but the mouse disappears when you do so, so if you're not lined up just right, that can get... problematic), a museum with not enough slots for all of the tanks(even Before the current newest tanks), a tank movement system between the garage and otherwise that gets.... Well... No marks, for ease of use or user experience grading, and just a few too many other small glitches and bugs to mention off the top of my head.

I get that it's a work in progress, and I really do appreciate that it's being worked on, but I don't think it's ready. I'll say it again, it's one of the most satisfying mechanic simulator games among them, but it's just... It needs so much. It needs so much to really get to the point where it's workable and effective.

It's a decent game but has too many flaws that take you out of the experience of actually being a "tank mechanic".

- Everything can be done in one place. You have an entire section dedicated to "painting" but you can do the basic stuff right at the assembly.

- Your tools are hilariously disconnected from reality. Sander, paingun, "deruster" etc do not have a cable connection and work and sound always the same where you are able to here the wavefile loop again and again.

- No dedicated sections for sanding parts, painting parts etc. which would normally be needed and would increase the immersion a lot.

- Tanks and accessories are comically small and getting in or out to reach certain places just squishes you into places that make zero sense.

- When painting the tanks you realise that zero thought was put into what you are actually painting. Lights, Antennas, electronics in general, part of the engine and so on are one and the same, meaning a headlight for example is just a metal brick to be COMPLETELY painted with no functionality whatsoever.

- The crafting System is totally useless since there is no real benefit in producing parts yourself. There was no thought put into the skill progression and why players would want to craft parts themselves in the first place.

- A good thing you can testdrive and use a shooting range with your tank. Unfortunately it is so basic and rinse and repeat that you just don't care to do so after 2 or 3 times.

- Having the ability to customise your garage a bit is nice but lacks a lot of freedom in the end, though this is not super important in contrast to the other things.

- Excavating tanks yourself and finding old world war era accessories and weapons is a great idea on paper but the lack of detail during the procedure and the unrealistically small scale of that kind of operation makes you not care very quick.

- Contracts are not specific enough to make you think about what you actually want to do on a certain tank. You can just take a simple repair job and basically restore it to full even though your "customer" never specified they wanted that much done and just pays you an adjusted amount for your work. This might seem nice but if you think about the business side of things, this also doesn't make any sense whatsoever.

- General lack of Detail. The tanks have weird paint choices as well as the problem with the before mentioned "painted on" lights and other parts that normally have a real function and are treated as "metal bricks" as well. Every surface has the same base texture to it.

All in all, even though this game is super basic: If you REALLY love tanks, you will have some fun for a bit. You soon will realise that you just wanted more. Maybe another dev will look at this and go all the way. Until then this is a case of "missing alternatives" if you really want to, get it on a sale or sth.

This is not a mechanic simulator.
The game mostly focuses on rust removal and finishing, there is very little actual mechanics in the game and i feel that the game title poorly reflects what kind of game it is.
With that said, it does offer some hours of fun, and who knows, maybe they will add more stuff with time as it does not seem to be abandoned yet.

I enjoy playing good and accurate mechanic games. I was fortunate enough to experience Car Mechanic Simulator 2018, a game that I loved playing with close to 100 hours. Unfortunately, as much as I wanted to like this game I simply don't. Car Mechanic 2018 has set a standard, a standard I expected to see in this game too (Since its from the same developers). These "standards" are all but gone. The graphical quality overall feels worse. Particularly upon excavating a new tank, it looks terrible even with max graphics settings. If you have played any of the previous car mechanic games, you would know that there were a lot of interactive components on the vehicle. In Tank mechanic, there are certainly less. For example the removal of a mechanic item would first require you to remove bolts etc. In this game you take it straight off no questions asked, thus affecting its accuracy. Additionally, I don't have that sense of achievement in this game. From playing the game for the first time, I completed a few tasks and had allready managed to fully restore an excavated tank. For me, the ability to excavate tanks and restore them for show in the museum shouldn't happen untill significantly later in the game, an "end game loot" sort of thing.

I'm not 100% confident that the game can be changed enough that I will write a positive review, however I do believe that development of numerous aspects of the games mechanics etc will only see to improve the overall quality of gameplay.

1. Adverts for the devs other games on the main menu, even worse, when you exit, there's a full screen advert you have to close before you can finally close the game. Granted the main menu adverts are unobtrusive, but the full page of adverts when trying to exit the game, things like this are major pet peeves for me.

2. The in-game tutorial gives hot stinking garbage a bad name, seriously if you have to go searching the discussion forum and guides section trying to get past the tutorial, you know something is seriously wrong.

The game doesn't even introduce you to the tools, the first time I was aware of them I was trying to repaint a tank in the paint booth and ended up delving into the discussion boards, where I learned of the existence of the tool table and tools, and that the paint booth isn't actually used for priming and repainting !!!Even after 3 missions I still have no idea about certain aspects of the game.

I have a paint booth, but to paint a tank, you use a spray gun in the workshop, I honestly have no idea what you use the booth for other than adding decals.I have no idea how to repaint certain parts. On my last mission I fixed up an M3 halftrack, the game wanted the seats, battery and cables painted... yes I said painted, but while I could paint almost every other part, including parts of the engine, I couldn't paint these and had to send them off to be repainted for me…

3. The controls are terrible, almost every action is performed through a contextual commo rose that is layers deep and counter intuitive. Honestly, the thing that spoiled the game for me the most was constantly navigating through endless commo rose options switching between trying to find what was wrong and what I had missed.

In all honesty, I'd say I spent as much time, if not more trying to work out where I had missed some rust, where I had missed some sanding, where I had missed some paint, actually removing and replacing parts is at most 1/3 of the game, the rest is more of a hidden object game, ordering parts, moving a tank around the workshop, accepting orders and trying to maneuver over a tank without having to use the commo rose to find the option to teleport inside.

4. Perhaps the best summary of the game is, an oversized Airfix kit simulator, again my last mission, rebuilding an M3, replacing almost all the parts other than the chassis and hull, I welded 2 holes and attached 8 bolts, the rest of the parts just snapped together like magic.

5. The game is super janky, playing at 60fps (with a constant 59/60fps showing in game), locked with Afterburner/RTSS the game feels more often than not it is playing below 30fps. After playing for 2 and bit hours, my eyes feel strained and I feel slightly nauseous, look at the other reviews, there's a review by swamp.sv stating the same and they had 140fps.

6. When excavating you can only carry one tool at a time, I couldn't even get the jeep to move (yes I turned on the engine) and so I had to travel back and forth, back and forth and ended up just dumping the tools in the field. When I eventually found the tank, I couldn't excavate it, because I had left tolls in the field... I mean... really ???7.

Not a huge issue, but the English translation (at least I hope it's translation) isn't great, it' not terrible, it's just very obvious and the only time I had a problem with it was during the tutorial.

There could have been a decent game here, but for me the gameplay focus is all wrong, actual gameplay is sloppy, poorly thought out and implemented. If it were early access, I'd say hold on, but it's not, it was released 3 years ago and IMHO it requires too much reworking to make a decent game from it.

The game is abandonware, only a few tanks have detailed models. The devs aren't putting out updates beyond enabling/disabling the seasonal missions.

They decided they'd rather work on their other game, generic tank combat game #53 and go bankrupt making that rather than work on the game that people actually liked.

Too much emphasis on cleaning away rust, and painting than actual mechanic stuff. For example you fix engines by grinding away and sandblasting it.

This game has great graphics / models.
But there is nearly no gameplay to speak of. You generate extreme amounts of cash and reputation in a rly short time and after you got all skills and upgrades there is no much left to strive for. 'Repairing' the tanks is done by using 4 different color brushes (Rust removal, Sandblast, Primer and Color) wich all handle the same and have a large radius so that disassembling a tank is nearly never needed.

There is the groundwork for a really great game but the gameplay is just not there.