Trash Goblin

by Aethyna Nov 30, 2024 | 1 Votes | 49 Played | 0 Reviews

8 rate

Genres:

Simulation

Graphics:

Labels:

Shop Design , Management

Platforms:

Publishers:

Spilt Milk Studios Trash Goblin is a cozy shopkeeping game where you get to restore various artifacts and trinkets by chipping away at the dirt, sponging them down, and assembling the parts; and, subsequently, sell them to your customers. Will you be able to turn your little shop into the talk of the town? Play Now Similar Games

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Summary Gameplay Graphics/ Sound Conclusion

Summary

Trash Goblin is a cozy shopkeeping game where you get to restore various artifacts and trinkets by chipping away at dirt, sponging them down, and assembling the parts; and subsequently, sell them to your customers. Upgrade your shop with your earnings, purchase better tools, and place some décor to spruce the place up. Will you be able to turn your little shop into the talk of the town?

Gameplay

Trash Goblin has a gameplay that’s super easy to get into, which befits its cozy theme. The goal here is to make money – it is, after all, a shopkeeping game – and become a successful business-goblin. To do this, you’ll need to restore various trinkets you get from your in-game aunt for free at your Work Bench, and sell them to your customers depending on what they are looking for at the Customer Desk.

Restoring a trinket is simple enough here. Firstly, you’ll have to chip away the blocks of dirt caking the thing. There are many different types of blocks here, including the very brittle glass-like blocks and the extradimensional purple blocks, and you may employ different strategies to tackle them to minimize the number of clicks you do. Of course, if clicking the blocks is too much for you since repetitive motion may trigger carpal tunnel syndrome, you can adjust the settings so that the game will automatically chip away at the block – all you need to do is hover your mouse cursor over the block!

Once done, you’ll uncover what the trinket is. I should point out that there’s a bit of a collectathon element here since there are quite a wide variety of items that you can essentially collect. However, the item is still caked in dirt and well, most customers aren’t willing to pay more for a dirty item. This is where the sponge comes in! You can use the sponge provided to simply scrub away the dirt. Similarly, you can choose the default “click and hold” for this part of the process or you can take the easier way out by having the game auto-scrub the dirt whenever your cursor is hovering over it – whichever works best for you!

After cleaning the trinkets, you can then choose to store it in your inventory (a.k.a. the Stash) or if a customer wants the item, immediately sell the thing off for some pure profit! Once you’ve unlocked the Upcycling tool, you can even combine parts of an item to assemble a complete object that typically sells for more. However, there’s a bit of a catch here: some customers can be very particular about what they want and sometimes, they just want part of an object – like a replacement piece – rather than the entire thing.

Got cash? Well, you may want to spend them wisely by purchasing helpful upgrades around your store. You can do this by clicking on the little discount icon right next to Personal Space tab. It’s always great to grab upgrades that actually grant you some bonuses like increased inventory slots rather than the more cosmetic-oriented ones, but it’s entirely up to you to decide how to spend your hard-earned cash.

I should also point out that every action you take in this game, with the exception of shop upgrades and delivering items to customers via the storefront, will cost you some time. There’s a meter on the side that keeps track of this for you. Once the meter is filled, then it’s time to hit the hay and call it a day! Unlike time management sims that puts a timer on your orders, there’s no such thing in Trash Goblin. You can choose to ignore a customer and just have fun uncovering new trinkets for your collection, or ask them to come back later if you so wish.

The coziness is apparent in this game right from the start with your super-chill and generous boss and landlord. From the interactions early on, it seems like you used to work for the boss, but they noticed your skills at shopkeeping and decided to let you run your own store. They gave you the tools you need to get started and even waive all upkeep that typically plagues a new business such as rent.

However, as fun as the game is, there are flaws that may put some players off the game. For instance, although the gameplay loop is fun and satisfying, the way you’re forced to manage your customers in this game isn’t. For customers with stories tied to them, you can’t just ask them to come again later, while you try to find or assemble the item they want. You can’t even dismiss them even if you want to. So, essentially, you have to cater to one customer at a time despite the fact that considering how fast your inventory will fill up, you could have easily taken on more customers and have them all neatly tracked via a list.

Alongside with adding more trinkets, hopefully this is something the devs are working to address so that when the game moves from early access into launch, this issue would have been resolved.

Graphics/ Sound

Trash Goblin features a nice blend of graphical styles, namely the cartoonish hand-drawn art that illustrate the backgrounds and many of the furniture and items you can interact with, and anime-inspired art that dominates the character art. In terms of sound, the game features several soundtracks that play when you perform certain actions, such as when using the chisel vs. when you’re using the sponge. The music matches perfectly with the game’s cozy theme, providing a relaxing atmosphere at which the player gets to enjoy the busywork of shopkeeping.

Conclusion

Trash Goblin is designed to be the perfect cozy game to wind down to after a long day, especially for fans of shopkeeping games. The loop of clean-reveal-clean-assemble is incredibly satisfying, and it’s just fun to see what you get after chiseling the dirt blocks off the trinket. But of course, the game still has room to improve and as an early access game, this is something the devs can still work on prior to the game’s official release.

New Game Added: Trash Goblin

by Aethyna Nov 30, 2024

Trash Goblin is a cozy shopkeeping game where you get to restore various artifacts and trinkets by chipping away at the dirt, sponging them down, and assembling the parts; and, subsequently, sell them to your customers. Will you be able to turn your little shop into the talk of the town?