Review: Trash Goblin

Genre / Tags: Casual, Simulation, Wholesome, Relaxing
Developer/Publisher: Spilt Milk Studios Ltd/Spilt Milk Studios Ltd
URL: Trash Goblin on Steam

Been eying this game for a hot minute, at least a year or so. Finally getting to give it a go during it’s demo phase during Next Fest on Steam.

First off, the tutorials are great, giving me a hands-on steps of what I’m doing at each moment of the game. The tutorial repeatedly instructs players to “click the exclamation mark” but this seems unnecessary after the first few times.

Trash Goblin feels right away like a medieval power wash simulator meets item shop simulator. Going through the first 4-5 days of the essentially tutorial of the game was fairly fun, but it was mostly just chipping away the parts to reveal what item it was, and then washing said item to make it presentable for the customer.

All of which is a fun gameplay loop, but got dull fast. However, when you add the next tier of gameplay where you’re combining the different items to make a mishmashed up item to then sell, is where the ‘meat’ of the gameplay really unlocked. I only played just barely passed day 5 mind you, since the tutorial/demo was basically over at that point. But I did enjoy putting as many things as the game would allow me together, to then sell to a customer who was just asking me for a bottle. Made it pretty enjoyable

One of my biggest gripes is that a lot of the dialog options kind of seem pointless to me. There’s many times that I’m only given one option just to basically get the next dialog from the NPC I work with, or if I’m given multiple options, they are all almost the same thing just said slightly different but meaning the same, so going back to just basically being a “next” option for the dialog to continue.

Another is text box overlapping. Text boxes will end up in the middle of the screen. You have to move things to interact with the NPC behind them. It’s a little clunky to me. It would be nice if the text was either off to the left or right of the top of the screen. Anywhere outside of the middle of the screen so the player can interact without being hindered by said text box.

I’d give Trash Goblin a 7.3/10. The gameplay loop is pretty enjoyable, especially once you start putting together wacky items to sell to the customers. I’d say my biggest takeaway from the game in its current state is my text choices don’t really matter. I don’t set my prices; the customer tells me what they want to pay. If I say no thanks, they’ll just stay there and not go away until I say yes to them.

Fatality Gaming Magazine –