![]() ![]() Landing on the ground for even a fraction of a second will give you back all of the charges your battery can contain. You initially start out with one charge and each charge allows you to jump once mid air – aka it’s a double jump, and a triple jump or a quadruple jump once you get more energy. The big gimmick of Trash Quest is the battery which apparently powers the racoon’s jetpack. ![]() You’ll encounter more traps than you will killer robots, and even the killer robots feel more like destructible parts of an obstacle course rather than foes to grapple with. Tight controls are key to this “hard but fair” feeling.Įven though the racoon starts with a gun, the main challenge of Trash Quest is the platforming. As punishing as being kicked back to the center can feel, the game always feels fair enough that it’s easy to come up with a new plan as you’re walking back to where you died, keeping you strongly motivated. The music in general is perfect for this kind of game though it gets you pumped and makes you feel heroic when you achieve a difficult part. Sometimes it can feel like the single checkpoint rule is unnecessary, and as good as the music is, that initial theme that plays when you’re near those center trash cans almost sounds like it’s mocking you after a while. Even though it doesn’t take that long to trek back from the game’s center the mere idea that you’ll have to do it puts a lot of pressure on you to get things right. You are going to have to figure out how to time your jumps, and every time you get hurt it makes you bleed psychologically. You’re given a number of health points that allow you to make a few mistakes, but it almost never feels like enough to completely mitigate the difficulty. Most of the game is simply figuring out how to get from point A to point B without dying. The game also provides movement upgrades that let you enter new zones, but even just unlocking doors is very welcome after you’ve just completed a tough challenge. Considering how easy it is to die in this game, and how repetitive it would be to have to do every challenge every time, Trash Quest also relies heavily on providing shortcuts back to that center to cut back on the repetition. Thus the game theoretically has no need to have more than the one checkpoint that Trash Quest provides. Apparently the racoon just knows that there is far more garbage available somewhere on that ship, and your main goal is to find it.Īny part of the garbage scow can be reached in a matter of seconds starting from the ship’s center. You play as a racoon who wakes up in a few trash cans on an interstellar garbage scow operated only by robots. “Compact Metroidvania” is how the game’s store page describes Trash Quest, I’m sure with absolutely no pun intended. It might not be that perfect Mini-Metroidvania that I have been looking for, but it has perfect pricing and fully accomplished the goal of putting a smile on my face in a short amount of time. Trash Quest is a challenging game, with only one checkpoint for the entire experience and some jumps that will make you clench your skin tight onto your bones. The initial release still felt over too quickly but thankfully since launch a free DLC has added just enough extra content to make the game at least feel feature complete. I feel like Trash Quest is a step closer to that perfect Mini-Metroidvaia though, and it’s a contender for my favorite Mini-Metroidvania of the ones I’ve played so far. Being so short of course presents a design challenge can you make a truly satisfying game with such a short run time? I personally have a lot of theories on how a small package can provide a full length game’s level of satisfaction, but of course being a mere critic, it’s usually my job to just sit in my arm chair and suggest things. I will always be a defender of this style of game because it’s a great way to satiate an appetite for Metroidvania tropes without taking too much time out of your busy day or too much time away from the more demanding games you might also be playing. Trash Quest is what I like to call a “Mini-Metroidvania”, which means that it will probably take you less than an hour to beat. ![]()
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