Deliverage | Ep. 1 – Nothing Suspicious Happening in This Alley, Officer
A brand-new series begins, and everything is completely legitimate. We’re simply making deliveries. At night. In suspicious alleys. Please stop asking questions and definitely don’t look in the package.
Welcome to Deliverage — or possibly Deliver Rage. I am still not entirely sure how we’re supposed to say it. What I do know is that Mr. Smith gifted us a game that feels suspiciously like Motor Town with knuckle dusters, and within one evening we’d built a questionable logistics empire, laundered mushroom money and discovered that our greatest enemy wasn’t another player.
It was our own van.
🚚 About Deliverage
Deliverage is a hardcore open-world PvP delivery game where every shipment is a gamble. You can fight other players for valuable cargo, repair and modify increasingly fragile vehicles, work a shifting economy and gradually build yourself up from absolutely nothing.
The PvP is there for anyone wanting to embrace it, but Mr. Smith and I weren’t particularly interested in turning the evening into a demolition derby. We effectively switched combat off and concentrated on the economy instead.
That still leaves plenty of questionable career opportunities. Alongside ordinary resource hauling, there are criminal enterprises, drugs and a particularly lucrative mushroom trade. Think Motor Town, except somebody has removed the health and safety department.
🛣️ Where We Are in the Journey
This is Episode 1, so we’re right at the beginning. No established business, no fleet of vehicles and, initially, not even a van.
The objective was simple: make some money, buy transport and start shifting larger quantities of goods around the world. We began in the starting area, but by the end of the night we’d ventured onto another island, experimented with several parts of the economy and learned considerably more about vehicle recovery than I’d intended.
🔥 What Happens in This Episode
Our completely legitimate business empire began, naturally, with wandering around in the dark picking special mushrooms.
At the start of the evening we had essentially nothing, so the immediate priority was getting enough money together for some wheels. Deliverage gives you plenty of ways to earn cash, ranging from perfectly respectable resource hauling to the slightly less respectable worlds of drugs and mushrooms, and we quickly discovered which end of that economic spectrum was going to finance our first vehicle.
After enough mushroom collecting and questionable transactions, we finally scraped together the cash for our very first van. This felt like the moment the business was properly beginning. No more carrying things around manually. We had transport. We could buy in bulk, move cargo around the map and start building ourselves into a serious logistics operation.
There was just one tiny problem.
The van had absolutely no storage.
I’d bought it, refuelled it and spent virtually everything we had, only to discover that our exciting new delivery vehicle couldn’t actually carry the deliveries. We were left with a van, an empty bank account and the sudden realisation that we needed to go straight back to doing everything manually.
So it was back to the mushrooms and drug trade.
That also introduced us properly to the money-laundering side of Deliverage. We’d make our dubious money and take it to the laundromat to turn it into something the bank apparently wouldn’t ask awkward questions about. Every time we went in there, I couldn’t help thinking about the scene in Loaded Weapon where they open the cupboard and there’s a bloke with a washing machine full of money.
That is now what I assume is happening behind the scenes in Deliverage.
Eventually, the operation produced enough cash to install storage in the back of the van, which meant we could finally begin shifting worthwhile quantities of cargo. First, though, I wanted to find another mushroom location I’d spotted — one that I knew was accessible by road.
Or at least I thought I knew.
I took a slight wrong turn and encountered a blocked road. In hindsight, that was probably the universe politely suggesting that I turn around.
Obviously, I ignored it.
We got past the first blockade only to discover another one roughly a hundred metres farther along. Then there was another obstruction after that. At this point, rather than accept that perhaps we weren’t supposed to be driving this way, I decided we’d find a route around and head towards a nearby bridge.
Surely the mushroom spot must be over there somewhere.
It wasn’t.
Instead, I got halfway across a rickety old bridge and managed to get the van slightly stuck. This would have been a relatively minor inconvenience had I remembered one very useful feature: you can get out and push the vehicles.
I had completely forgotten.
What followed was a Deathloop as I tried to rescue the van using considerably more complicated methods. We went through two recoveries before the forgotten knowledge finally returned to me that I could simply get out and physically push the thing.
This piece of information would become extremely relevant for the rest of the evening.
Once the van was rescued and we’d finally worked out where the mushroom location actually was, business picked up considerably. We drove down, loaded the storage and came away with roughly ten grand’s worth of mushrooms.
Now we were getting somewhere.
Of course, that money wasn’t exactly clean, so back to the laundromat we went. The increasingly loud machinery did its work while I continued imagining somebody in the back room stuffing banknotes into a washing machine.
With some actual money behind us, we started looking farther afield.
Until this point I’d mostly remained around the starting area, so we decided to venture out towards one of the other islands and see what else Deliverage had hidden around the map. The game informed us that the destination was about 500 kilometres away, although considering we crossed the bridge at nearly 100 km/h without requiring an overnight stop, I suspect Deliverage may calculate distance differently from the rest of civilisation.
By this stage, Mr. Smith had joined the game as well. He was concentrating on moving oil and plastic products around the world to stimulate the economy while I explored the island and looked for opportunities of my own.
I found some oil that could be shifted elsewhere and then picked up plastics for the return journey to the mainland. I could probably have filled the van with more, but I knew Mr. Smith was collecting the same resources, so I took a smaller amount and left the rest for him.
It was all beginning to resemble an actual functioning delivery business.
Then I looked at the fuel gauge.
Despite having filled the van relatively recently, we were almost empty. Somehow we managed to get back across the bridge and deliver the plastics before running dry, narrowly avoiding yet another problem.
Unfortunately, fuel consumption was rapidly becoming the least concerning thing about the van.
By now it had taken an extraordinary amount of punishment. Deliverage’s vehicle handling is currently rather… enthusiastic. The centre of gravity feels as though it’s somewhere several feet above the roof, because the slightest steering input can send the entire vehicle rolling onto its side.
It doesn’t necessarily require speed, either.
You can crawl along, make a tiny turn and suddenly discover that your delivery van has decided wheels are optional.
At first, this was hilarious.
Chat certainly enjoyed it.
The van gradually became the star of the stream as every journey turned into another opportunity to see which panel would cave in next. SpiffyMango suggested putting it through an acrobatics class and fitting crane-style stabilisers, while Vvoornth observed that I seemed to be spending considerably more time travelling on the side of the van than on its wheels.
Eventually it had been battered so thoroughly that it didn’t really resemble a van anymore.
It looked more like a milk float that had been folded in half.
We dragged what remained of it back towards the garage and discovered another slight financial problem: we couldn’t afford to repair it.
So we abandoned the wreck temporarily and went back to travelling on foot.
More drug deals followed. More mushrooms were collected. More suspicious money went through the laundromat. We even shifted smaller loads where we could, slowly rebuilding the bank balance until we finally had enough to put the van back together.
Repairs alone were becoming an economy of their own.
Once it was roadworthy again, we decided perhaps the answer was modification. If the vehicle insisted on throwing itself onto its roof every time I touched the steering wheel, perhaps some extra grip and suspension work would tame it.
We bought higher-grip tyres and experimented with some options from the suspension section at the garage.
For a brief moment, I thought we’d solved it.
Then we drove out of the garage at only a couple of miles per hour, turned slightly…
…and immediately ended up upside down.
Somehow, we’d made it worse.
At this point the evening had become an ongoing battle between my desire to explore Deliverage and the van’s determination to explore every possible orientation except upright.
We still pushed farther into the map, because there was clearly much more of the world to discover. Oil deliveries gave us another potential income stream, and one shipment brought in around seven thousand.
The only slight flaw in this business model was that the van subsequently needed somewhere in the region of fourteen thousand in repairs.
Financially, I am not entirely convinced this qualifies as profit.
There was, however, one glorious breakthrough in cost-saving.
We encountered a toll bridge wanting £500 for passage. Given the state of our finances — and the even worse state of the van — I decided there had to be another way.
Because we’d already spent most of the night rolling the vehicle onto its side accidentally, we finally decided to weaponise our expertise.
We pulled up to the toll booth, positioned the battered van and managed to roll it through the toll on its side without paying.
Success.
We had beaten the system.
Yes, the van would eventually require roughly £14,000 worth of repairs, but that isn’t the point.
We saved £500 on the toll.
The multiplayer side of the evening was producing its own problems as well. Mr. Smith and I have something of a history involving vehicles, and despite the enormous size of the map, he has previously demonstrated a remarkable ability to mysteriously run me over.
His arrival therefore generated a healthy amount of suspicion.
Chat, naturally, did everything possible to improve diplomatic relations.
At one point SpiffyMango announced that we had to run Mr. Smith down.
So, obviously, we ran him over.
There were plenty of other distractions bubbling away in chat throughout the evening as well. The Pokémon hunt escalated to the point where Happy_Cat_Lady eliminated a Doduo with a thermite charge and Mr. Smith dealt with a Meganium using an ion cannon. SpiffyMango emerged victorious from a Hunger Games diversion, #blamegary inevitably returned, and Australia somehow found itself dragged into proceedings through conversations involving emus, the Aussie army and the land of invertedness.
Meanwhile, I was still trying to keep the van upright.
One surprising discovery was that driving backwards actually seemed to make it more stable. For one brief, magnificent moment, it appeared that the future of our Deliverage logistics company might involve completing every shipment in reverse.
Honestly, given how the rest of the evening had gone, I was willing to consider it.
We eventually returned to the starting area and removed the modifications we’d fitted, hoping the original setup might restore some sanity.
It didn’t.
The van remained completely uncontrollable. Even at painfully low speeds, every corner felt like a potential rollover. We were repeatedly jumping out, pushing it back onto its wheels, getting inside, moving another short distance and doing the whole thing again.
By then, the joke had started becoming genuinely frustrating.
There are only so many times you can climb out of the same vehicle every five seconds to roll it back over before you begin reconsidering your career in logistics.
Still, underneath all the vehicular chaos, there was a game here that I genuinely wanted to see more of.
Deliverage is very early access, and we encountered several bugs and errors during the evening. Rather than simply complaining about them, we took screenshots and posted them into the developer’s Discord. The response was encouraging — the developer seemed very open to discussion and willing to jump onto problems people were finding.
That’s one of the reasons this isn’t the end of Deliverage on stream.
We’ll likely bring it back every few weeks, see what updates have arrived and find out how the game develops. It has also reminded me just how much I enjoy Motor Town, which hasn’t appeared on stream for a while because simulator night has been occupied by Construction Simulator. I think we’ll have to get some more Motor Town back into the rotation as well.
For Episode 1, though, we’d done enough.
We’d started from nothing, bought and upgraded our first van, built up cargo capacity, established a mushroom operation, traded drugs, laundered money, hauled oil and plastics, explored another island, experimented with the wider economy, dodged a toll, tested multiplayer and discovered several innovative new ways to park a van on its roof.
Most importantly, the van was somehow still technically operational.
With the handling finally defeating my patience, we called it there for the evening and sent the community onwards with a raid into OurChickenLife.
Our criminal delivery empire will return.
Preferably once someone has lowered the van’s centre of gravity.
📺 Watch the Episode
If you want to witness the mushroom empire, questionable laundering operation, toll-booth engineering and one increasingly two-dimensional van for yourself, watch the full episode here:
Watch Deliverage Episode 1 on YouTube
You can follow the whole adventure through the Deliverage series playlist and find more videos on Dr Ravenholm on YouTube.
If you enjoy the chaos, give the video a like, leave a comment and subscribe so you don’t miss the next attempt at legitimate commerce.
🌙 Join the Adventure Live
Recorded episodes only capture part of the madness. The real expedition happens live, where chat gets to witness every terrible navigation decision, unexpected Deathloop and van-flipping catastrophe as it unfolds.
Join us on Twitch or catch the stream through YouTube. Come aboard, join the conversation and perhaps remind me that vehicles can be pushed before I’ve used recovery twice.
🌐 Community & Links
The delivery network extends well beyond the suspicious alleys. If you want to stay connected between streams, there are plenty of ways to join the wider Ravenholm community.
Live: When the lights come on and another perfectly sensible plan begins to unravel, you’ll find us on Twitch and YouTube.
Community: Join the crew over on Discord and stay close to the action between streams.
Socials: Follow the trail across TikTok, Bluesky, Instagram, Facebook, Threads and X.
Support: If you’d like to help keep the operation supplied, visit the merch store or support the stream directly.
More: Beyond the streams, explore the Transparent Aluminium Business Centre, download the service brochure, learn more about me or visit the blog.
🚨 Until the Next Delivery
For now, the van is parked — hopefully upright — and our completely legitimate delivery empire is temporarily closed for business.
We’ll be back in Deliverage to see what changes, what gets fixed and whether somebody can finally teach that van which direction gravity is supposed to work.
Until next time, stay safe out there… and if anyone asks what’s in the package, you know nothing.
— Dr Ravenholm
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