Trash Sailors, developed by fluckyMachine and published by tinyBuild, is a co-op action adventure game set in a world ravaged by a trash tsunami. You play as the titular Trash Sailors, who utilize the trash in the ocean to power their raft that transports them to safety. Throughout the game you need to avoid perilous dangers such as huge waves, monsters in the dark, houses and buildings sunk in the water, as well as the local wildlife. With all of this and more that the game offers, is Trash Sailors a good game to play, or will it end up sinking to the depths of obscurity.
PROS:
The graphics of Trash Sailors are easily one of the highlights of this game. With its muted, yet still colorful palette and hand-drawn art style, the game feels like it was pulled straight out of a children’s book from the 1800s. Characters are perfectly stylized with the exact level of grime they need to sell the “trash sailor” look. This simple graphical choice also helps to keep the game running smoothly regardless of how many enemies or components are present on the screen.
And while the graphics are well-designed and implemented, the gameplay also held a lot of praise. One of the best components of this game is how simple each mechanic operates from each other, and how that simplicity, when put together, creates a lot of complex mechanics. For example, the player can grab trash to make scrap. This scrap can be used to repair the raft’s base, or to refuel the engine. Management of this resource is crucial to the raft’s survival and the level’s completion, which helps leave the player in a constant need of this resource. And yet there are moments where not completing these actions also benefits you, as having less raft makes it more dangerous to traverse the ship, but also easier to maneuver obstacles. Running out of fuel is dangerous because you could be in a dangerous area stranded, or you could use it as an opportunity to repair damages and fish up extra resources. The mechanics are simple, but allow depth throughout playing.
CONS:
And while the game has good graphics, and the gameplay is simple enough for my 10-year-old nephew to play alongside me, the game is full of issues that plague it from start to finish. For this review, I played on Normal difficulty, which at the start of the game is the hardest option between itself and “relaxed.” Going into it with the expectation of a somewhat challenging experience, I was rather disappointed when “Normal” was instead an overwhelming and difficult experience. Hazards and enemies were plenty and resources would often spawn just when I wouldn’t need them anymore, as in order to make scrap the player would need three specific pieces of trash – trash that would only spawn right after those three pieces would expire and the machine that made the scrap would request three new items.
This leads into another issue with the game, which is the misidentification of the game’s genre. While the game is a “co-op trash-collecting action” game, it would be better to identify it as a time management simulator. The player needs to navigate to the end of every level in order to proceed, but also is required to manage the fuel in the ship’s engine, repair the boat, fight off enemies, avoid obstacles, collect treasure to upgrade their ship, and not die in the process. Normally this kind of overload of objectives and hazards wouldn’t be a problem. The only issue arises when the player needs to understand one key mechanic: The boat, when turned on, does not stop moving forward. This throws a wrench in the gameplay that causes the entire game to suffer as a result. Not being able to stop leads to some very awful moments of frustration: For example, players can miss key treasures that offer bonuses by simply sailing over them. The player can also get stuck inside a mass of houses due to knockback via the collision, locking them into a circle of sunken hazards, killing them eventually. Players can’t collect loot at a reasonable pace, instead being forced to scramble for loot as soon as possible. There is no let-up to the tension, which in some instances can be fun, but for most of the time leads to a lot of stress, which is what you don’t want a game like this to be. Even with co-op, the game throws too much at you.
CONCLUSION:
All in all, Trash Sailors has some merits, being the charming artstyle and the simplicity in how its mechanics interact with the world. However, the good ends here. The game at times can be too difficult with how overwhelming it can be, throwing hazards at you at an unstoppable pace. Not only this, but the game’s mechanics, while being simple, are hindered via the ship’s inability to stop at will, which can lead to some buggy and stressful moments. This game can have its moments, but much like islands in an ocean, they are too far and few between.
For more information, visit: https://www.xbox.com/en-us/games/store/trash-sailors/9PHJJ15DQKM1
Related: Reviews by Matthew White
An avid gamer, Matthew is also an aspiring game developer. Because of this, Matthew knows not only what makes a game great, but also the hard work and artistry required to craft such a phenomenal experience.
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