Death Trash: Steam Early Access PC Launch Shows Promise Of Old School RPG

One of the first lessons I learn in Trash of death is that I can use my own vomit as a resource, so I scrape the vomit off the floor and keep it in my inventory. That will come in handy, as these ancient machines need biomaterial to function. It’s a quick way to get used to the strange world that awaits me out there.

Trash of death is an early access RPG from developer Crafting Legends that feels like a 2021 version of the original Fall out. I leave a security bastion and enter a hostile wasteland for a living. Along the way, I meet small civilizations and groups of people who need help. Those quest breadcrumbs lead me down the road to more groups and bigger plots, and so on, until I’m truly engulfed in a complex narrative ecosystem laden with mystery and danger.

Like other RPGs, I get a limited pool of points for submitting stats and abilities. Tools like empathy allow me to explore more conversation options, while animalism allows me to pick up little meat worms and throw them at my enemies. I can specialize in rifles and stay behind to take down my enemies with ranged fire, or forgo the hassle of administering ammo and just hitting people with blunt weapons.

Image: Crafting Legends

Once I explore an area, dungeon, settlement, or clearing, to my satisfaction, I return to the world map. While traveling, I often come up against muggers or cultists who want nothing more than to smack my butt for disrupting their day.

While this game has a lot in common with the old Fallouts and Wastelands, the combat in Trash of death it is not turn-based. In fact, it is fast and sometimes desperate. My character has to roll to dodge shots, reload his rifle after each return fire volley, and carefully use abilities like Shock or Stealth to survive. The more I get into the game, the easier it is to break things. Eventually I become a stealth monster that appears, stabs my enemies in the back, and disappears into the shadows without anyone noticing.

Unfortunately, many Trash of death in its current early access form it is not really satisfactory. There’s not much here – you can complete the main quest in about two hours, and there’s no satisfying narrative conclusion for many quests. Instead, the game simply asks you to come back for the full release sometime in 2022. The experience starts off with a lot of promise and does an incredible job of wooing you with the atmosphere of its early environments and the magnetism of its characters. like the lonely but friendly Fleshkraken.

Image: Crafting Legends

But once you’re in the thick of things, the cracks start to appear Trash of deathearly access build. For example, animalism sounds fun and it’s great to use worms as makeshift projectiles. But I couldn’t find another use for the skill in the game so far, so it feels like a pointless point. The occult, which also sounds a lot of fun, of course I want to know about the creepy and mysterious side of this already strange world, it doesn’t seem to emerge at all. At first, I was satisfied with how streamlined the items and inventory were, but enemies dropped the same things, like an old rifle, over and over again. I kept hoping for brighter loot and a sense of progression, but it never really came.

Right now, Trash of death it feels like a demo. It’s a breakthrough of what could be a great game, but it’s not a complete inning in and of itself. I’m excited for the game to be released in 2022, but for now I’ll drop it again. There’s a ton of potential here, and I’m glad I can take a look, but I don’t want to spoil my appetite for the meaty end product.