Trash of the Titans

Originally Posted 6/2/24

Brief Overview

Quick Overview

In Trash of the Titans, you play as a group of trash eating animals trying to protect your trash from Rats. The art style originally reminded me of Into the Breach, though as I looked at that game again, this one definitely has a more pixel art vibe. It's a turn based tactics game, so you will be going between characters and using their abilities to protect your trash. It's also a roguelike (lite?) where each run will present you with different ability options. The game also has randomized encounters.

In Depth Review

I originally came across Trash of the Titnas in this Cohost post and it seemed incredible. Play as a bunch of trash animals trying to protect your trash, what more could you ask for? The game has a demo which I played first and it allows you to do an entire run. It was a lot of fun, and for only $8.99 (or on sale for $8.09 when I got it) I figured it was well worth picking up. And it's been a lot of fun! The premise is cute, dialogue fun and well done, the characters are well made and the combat feels good. As of the time of writing, there are two acts (which seem to vary the maps and enemy types), and 5 different characters you can use in your party of 4. In between battles, you'll play a sort of tetris mini game which provides your characters with upgrades to their stats, based on how much trash you were able to secure.

The Good

The game is fun. I really enjoyed playing it. Like I mentioned above, I think combat is really well done. Each character has a different class and they feel all unique enough and different enough where making a plan on how to tackle each battle feels important. You have Badger who is a tank, Raccoon who is an assasin type character, Possum who is an archer, Skunk who is a mage, and I want to say a Cat who is a necromancer. Often I found myself splitting the party to try and deal with all the different enemies. But at higher difficulties, that was a problem as even Badger would start struggling to really tank all the hits.

The enemies are also really well done. There are different types of enemies who will have different passives that often are applied in AOEs to nearby enemies. And so you end up having to choose if you want to try and kill the tougher enemy first, to get rid of the AOE buff it's giving its allies, or if you want to kill the smaller enemies first so less things have the buff. On top of all of this, many enemies are making a beeline to grab the trash and leave, so you need to make sure you get them too. In act 2, there are even enemies that can steal the trash from a distance. Honestly I was really pleasantly surpised just how much enemy variety there is in the game. Even the bosses are really well done overall, forcing you to do more than simply just hit them a bunch.

The Bad

The game is short. One run takes roughly an hour or two, and you don't carry progress from one act to another. You simply pick what act you want to play on as you begin a run, go through the run, and that's it. There are about 9 battles per run. I found myself reaching the end of a run, and feeling like I had just gotten my team leveled and powered up to where I want them and it was over. Now, this is an issue I have with roguelikes in general, however it felt especially bad to me in this game. I wish it had an endless mode or was slightly longer in general.

The act 1 boss fight sort of borders on not fun for me? There are mage rats that can summon portals which summon more rats. While there is a rat portal on the field, the boss can not be damaged. This ends up being a bit of a pain, as what ended up happening to me was the portals would spawn on opposite sides of the map, and it would take characters multiple turns to get to them (you just have to walk on them to make them go away). In the mean time, I'd typically leave Badger the Tank right next to the boss, as it seems to just attack whoever is closest, and I wouldn't want him going after my weaker units. So what typically ends up happening is multiple rounds of just... not doing much to the boss as I ran around trying to get rid of these portals. Now, this might simply be a skill issue. Maybe I didn't put enough points into movement, or maybe I could station and use my units better. But so far it's been one of those things where it feels just a bit too grindy for my taste.

One thing I found out while writing this review, is it seems like the game does not use Steam Cloud Sync currently to sync progress across devices. I played the game on my steam deck in desktop mode over the weekend, got back to my actual desktop today, and the progress does not seem to be there anymore. This isn't the biggest issue, as I plan to keep playing the game and it doesn't take that long to get back to where I was, but just odd.

One thing my brother pointed out, who also played this game, is he feels it's currently unbalanced. In particular, the necromancer character can easily make it so you have more troops than the enemy, making the game pretty easy at this point. I don't necessarily view this as a bad thing. I think it's fine to have some characters be really strong, and then let the players decide if they want to use them or not. However, I did want to add this here in case it was something that you think would bother you.

In fairness to the Developer

This game is still in Early Access. I'm going to copy/ paste the questions and answers provided by the dev in the Early Access section on the steam page below:

Why Early Access?

Approximately how long will this game be in Early Access?

How is the full version planned to differ from the Early Access version?

What is the current state of the Early Access version?

Will the game be priced differently during and after Early Access?

How are you planning on involving the Community in your development process?

As you can see from the dev's responses, they seem to be planning more things for this game and sound open to suggestions and feedback on how to make the game better. If the dev follows through with what they're planning, I think this game will be an easy recommendation for anyone who likes these sort of games.

Wrap Up

I think this game is a lot of fun and is an easy suggestion if you like these sort of games. My current rating of the game is based on the fact I think it's a bit too short, but it seems like the dev has plans to remedy that. Also, it's only about $9 currently, and I think that's a fantastic price for the amount of content currently in the game and for the work that seems to have gone into this. The game is really well done and I'd highly recommend trying out the demo at a minimum. Let me know your thoughts though. Feel free to reach out to steventanzimedia@gmail.com with all your thoughts!