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Totally not trash!

Welcome back!
Today we're here with an interesting rpg game made by BigGreenCreatures with RPGMaker VX Ace and released in 2020. I said that this is an interesting rpg because this isn't the typical fantasy rpgmaker game, but rather a post-apocalyptic game set in 2250, after that Earth became a wasteland of trash. Like many other games and stories told, the world is now inhospitable, but the human race survived, even if the pollution has affected them: now some people possess strange powers, but there are also hideous mutant beings that roam the lands.

In this game we play as Tilda, a classic silent protagonist that has the power to control blood. Together with a friends, a classic group of misfits, she works to earn money and also preserve humanity. As you can expect this isn't a happy place or lighthearted adventure, despite what the graphics may suggest you: in this dark future people die, and expect to lose some side characters. Not that this means that this is a game without humor, on the contrary this it a dark and gloomy adventure that still has some funny moments, satire and comedy (like other post apocalyptic games like Fallout).


She's right, but she will be surprised too, even if later she surprised me! Well, this was a really unexpected situation!

The game can be described as a classic party based rpg: we've a typical team of four, even if there are much more playable characters, but only four can be active party members (and unfortunately this means that you cannot access the inventory of the inactive ones) and most of the time the group composition is chosen by the game. I must admit that I liked this different characters, they're all cool and interesting from the "edgelord" class guy with the teleport skill and a gun to the rich girl with a hippo-man mutant slave. Weirdness aside, combat is really classic, with various special abilities (thanks to the mutations, of course) that requires spending MP, experience points needed to level up, and so on. Each character will have some skills that makes him/her/it fits a role like "tank", "healer" or "dps" and so on, so they are all useful in a different way.

Speaking about experience points, it's worth noting that enemies are the main source of experience, but NOT loot since really few of them drop credits! Uhm it makes sense since it's a dark wastland, and this means that money is scarce and consumables and gear are hard to obtain. Reasonable!
Most enemies are fought on maps where they're actually invisible... until they youch you and combat starts, on the other hand the world map uses the classic (infinite) random encounters, but this is not too bad, even if there was a specific area where I found the frequency of the battles a bit too intense, but it was an isolated case. As you can expect the game includes some boss battles too, these aren't really extremely difficult (but do not underestimate them!) as I expected but there are some unbeatable ones. I like that if you are defeated the game lets you re-try the battle.


I like black cats, especially when they let me save my game!

Since I mentioned the difficulty, I have to warn that there are two choices: easy and normal (but for me these should be renamed normal and hard!). The only real difference is that in easy mode when you save your game at the Save Cats or Proto Bots (since you cannot save from the menu when you want, no matter the difficulty) your party will be fully healed, otherwise it will be necessary to scavenge healing items. Good luck!

Speaking about scavenging, rememeber that the Break Time resets the trash cans, enabling the possibility to search them again. What it Break Time? During the storyline there are moments of pause (Break Time!) in which you can work for money, do some sidequests and fetch quests, buy some exclusive items, and bond with party members, increasing the relationship meter with them and unlocking permanent upgrades (including a special skill if the relationship is maxed).

Visually, as you can see, the game uses a simple MS-Paint art style that may seems stylized and a bit crude, a turn-off for some players, but in my opinion is far better than using the old Rtps seen a thousand times in other games. They're cute and colorful, even if they somewhat contrast with the dark, gloomy setting. There are facesets for the most important Npcs and the bizarre enemy battlers whose design reminds to me of the weird monsters from Superhero League of Hoboken (a 1994 post-apocalyptic rpg that was a parody of more serious games). Music is excellent, I like it a lot, there is a good variety of themes and you may even buy records in game! Cool!


Final Stimpack? What??? Is this Fallout?

Final Verdict
Trash Planet is a pretty long game, that took me 12-13 hours to complete, but it was a pretty fun experience (probably because I played the Easy mode for the total restoration, I know that the developer intended to make this game to be played on Normal, but I preferred a more relaxing experience in order to enjoy the story, so it was perfect for me), less combat intensive than I really expected. In the end this is still a classic story driven rpg game, and if you like this kind of game I suggest to give it a try even if you may not like the visual style, since you may be pleasantly surprised like I was! This is a solid game experience.