Review: Trash Sailors. This is Extreme Recycling.

 

The world's trash moved on relentlessly and as it grew beyond control it engulfed the earth and washed over its inhabitants in a giant tsunami. But as always people adapted, and their survival now hangs on their skill of using trash as their resource on their way to a new safer world. 

Recycling is the game as you use trash for fuel, spare parts or weaponry. Why weapons? Because you need to defend yourself from the many dangerous crocodiles, spider, pirates and toxic sharks and what nots.  

What is it?

Trash sailors is the second game developed by small a development team from Warsaw Poland. The game is a survival game with some rogue like elements for up to four players online or couch-coop. The goal is to survive through a series of levels and along the way upgrade your raft. The game is a bit of a hybrid build of Raft and Don't Starve Together with an Arcade flavor.  As you play through the game you will sail dozens of seas to hunt for treasure, kick sharks, fed monsters and shine a light into the darkness to scurry of a spider invasion. All in a frantic solo tour or an even more hectic multiplayer session with 3 of your friends.

Gameplay

As mentioned before trash collecting is the main resource in this game and you will use if for everything from powering the engine to fixing up and upgrading your raft. Once the engine is started your raft will move ever forward and it is up to you to find trash and catch it with a rope and hook. All trash goes into a trash compactor, an indicator at the bottom of your screen shows trash required by the compactor with a timer that runs down after which the trash needed changes again. If you get all pieces in time you are awarded a bonus, if you miss it just continue and try again. This is in part a bit RNG sensitive because perhaps you need a lamp and there is none in sight for most of the time (about a minute). So it can help to grab items and keep them on the raft until you need them after which you deposit them in the magical machine. But be careful because certain hazards can knock them off before you get to use them.

A side product of your adventure is also a money recourse consisting of bolts. These bolts can be used to upgrade your raft with items such as an anchor to slow/stop your raft, a better light, stronger materials, etc. All things to increase your survivability rate much as in a rogue-like. Getting enough for an upgrade can take a while but they improvements have a solid impact on your raft.

The controls in all this can take a bit to get used to, especially with the 2D artwork at times I missed my target or had trouble doing the right thing, especially when the pressure was on.

You can play with controller or Keyboard and Mouse. I found at least in solo mode that controller was a bit easier, because when you play solo you get a companion but if you have that companion steer you still need to actually do it and on the controller this is easier with the shoulder buttons.

The real strength of the game is with multiplayer as everyone gets a part and it makes it a bit easier to focus. However the game has been marred by a bunch of online connection issues and even though there has been work put in to stabilize the servers it is not as good as it should be. With the dev team being active we could see some good improvements to the game and its surrounding elements. One of the things I would like to see if local coop as I believe the game setup if perfect for it.

The game will get frustratingly hard quick, especially in solo mode. The fact you cannot stop or slow your raft once it goes, unless you have the anchor or it runs out of gas, while you are in need to get the right items, fix the raft, fend off enemies, while rushing head first into a collision makes the game anything but easy. You have to be on point and stay focused as well as get a little luck to make it through.

Presentation

Trash sailors looks and sounds fantastic. The hand drawn art and the animations bring the world to life and it feels like this was a Nick cartoon like Aaaah! Real Monsters or even paper craft puppetry. The overworld map is clear and a simple but effective tutorial gets you going with the quickly. Night missions can get the right level of creep as your spotlight turns off, and right as you turn it on you see tons of creepy spiders creep down on their strings. The main characters have some fun and goofy designs, and you can unlock accessories to dress them up and give them more personality than they already have. The work on the look and feel of the game by this small team certainly hit the mark.

Parent Recommendation

At the time of writing, I could not find an ESRB rating, but the game in my opinion as a gamer and parent is that this is a perfectly good game suited for all ages, not taking difficulty in account. As mentioned, there are some bad guys such as spiders and crocodiles, but nothing super scary and there is some light violence as you whack or later shoot them off your floatilla. Again if there was local coop I can see this as a good family game to play on a Saturday afternoon.

Final Thoughts

Trash Sailors is a fun little game that sadly has a few issues on release with what is supposed to be its strength; multiplayer fun.  As a solo game the game quickly becomes very hard to manage on all aspects making it not for everyone. From a worldbuilding and presentation aspect the game is a lot of fun and it feel really unique and I would definitely want to know a bit more about this world and its inhabitants. The developers seem to be having a lot of passion for their game and are supporting it and listening to the community so if you are not sure try the demo first or wait a little longer and see what updates are released for it. If you are looking for something different and especially if you have some friends to bring along, check it out. It is out now on steam.

Game Information

Developer: FluckyMachine

Publisher: tinyBuild

Release Date: December 16, 2021

Platforms: PC,Steam

Review platform:Steam

Price at launch: $19.99

ESRB: N/A . GvG recommendation: This is suitable for Everyone.

About the writer: DadGeek (Rob) is the co-founder of GeeksVsGeeks. He is a product of the eighties and never let go of his geek interest and hobbies no matter how often someone told him to stop. His love for gaming and all things geeks has been part of his parenting style and permeates throughout the whole family. A family of Geeks vs Geeks