Trash Sailors

by Aethyna Dec 29, 2021 | 1 Votes | 86 Played | 0 Reviews

8 rate

Genres:

Adventure

Graphics:

Labels:

Co-op

Platforms:

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tinyBuild Set in a world that's flooded by a sea of trash, Trash Sailors is a quirky co-op game where you sail through the dangerous trash-filled seas alone or with up to 3 friends, fishing out trash to be used as scraps to fix your raft or as fuel to power the engine. Play Now Similar Games

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Summary Plotline Gameplay Community Graphics/ Sound Conclusion

Summary

Trash Sailors is a quirky co-op game that’s set in a world that’s flooded by a sea of trash. In this game, you can choose to go at it alone or with up to 3 friends as you sail through the dangerous trash-filled seas, fishing out trash to be used as scraps to fix your raft or as fuel to power the engine. You can even upgrade your raft by collecting bolts, and also unlock new characters as you play.

Plotline

Mankind has been throwing rubbish into the ocean for ages and Mother Nature is out for revenge! Along with some help from climate change, a huge tsunami has swept across the shores, flooding cities with water and the trash humanity has dumped into the ocean.

In this game, you and your friends operate a raft that has a special machine which was retrofitted to convert trash you fished from the waters into more useful scrap that can be used to fix your raft or as fuel for the outboard engine.

Gameplay

The game slowly eases you into the gameplay here so even if you are unfamiliar with co-op games in general, you should be able to learn what you and your friends need to do at a fairly steady pace.

However, to put it simply, the goal here is to make it to the end of the level by navigating the dangerous trash-filled waters with your flimsy raft. The trash can be fished from the sea and added to the amazing machine you have in the center of your raft – it can turn whatever trash you dump into it into useful scraps. These scraps can be used to repair damaged sections of the raft and to fuel the engine.

There’s a neat combo system here as well. Every minute or so, the machine will show you a series of three types of trash that it needs for the combo to be triggered. If you can get all three types of trash added to the machine before the time runs out, you’ll get a nice pile of extra scraps for your efforts. Of course, if you can’t make it, that’s alright as well – you’ll just earn fewer scraps which is still good and all if you don’t have an immediate need for more.

Besides trash and scraps, there are also bolts-containing items like a jar of cookies or a gold vault that you can fish out and then throw into the machine to get precious bolts. You can also get bolts by completing levels as best as you can. This means reeling in more trash and avoiding collisions. These bolts are then used to upgrade your raft by getting a larger fuel tank or a stronger hull.

You can accumulate bolts across levels so if you are having a hard time getting through a newly unlocked level, you can simply replay previous levels to gather bolts, upgrade your raft, and then attempt the level again. If you have bolts to spare, there are decorations that you can buy for your raft as well. There are even map fragments stored in corked glass bottles that you can reel in to unlock a new map.

As you play, you’ll unlock new playable characters as well. The game starts you off with 2 characters with Francis being the most well-rounded one, but eventually, you’ll unlock more specialized characters like Mary who is a terrible steersperson but she can reel in trash a lot faster thanks to her harpoon. Of course, she also uses the same harpoon to attack enemies, unlike Francis who prefers his good old wrench.

To spice things up, there are also many challenges that you can expect along the way. There are obstacles that your raft can crash into if you can’t steer away from it in time, damaging your raft in the process. These obstacles can sometimes spawn quite suddenly and randomly, making it a real challenge for whoever is at the wheel to steer the raft.

Thankfully, the game has a way for the other survivors on the raft to pitch in – they can quickly run over to the side of the raft, and start hopping like mad. This will help pitch the raft to the heavier side, and it might just let you avoid hitting something. There’s also a cannon onboard that a player can operate to shoot at obstacles. Some obstacles may take more shots than others but they will eventually sink beneath the waves if you hit them enough times.

As you play, the game introduces new kinds of interesting challenges. Sometimes, you’ll get attacked by enemies who will drop onto your raft. There are also crocodiles that will attempt to damage your raft by chomping down on the edges. From time to time, you’ll encounter waves that will push whoever in its way into the sea, and spindly arms-like vines that will throw whoever’s standing underneath it into the sky (and away from the raft).

There are also moments where you’ll need to work the spotlights at the top of the mast as the skies go really dark really fast. This will scare away the nightly creatures in the dark – they look oddly like the spiders from Don’t Starve – as well as giving the steersman a way to see where to steer the raft to.

In addition to the usual levels, the game features a “turbo” mode as well. In this mode, the raft you pilot will move a lot faster, making it even more hectic to steer the raft and navigate the waters.

As fun as the game may be, the game didn’t really click with me or my gaming buddy. Maybe it’s because we are only two and that the game does seem like it’d be more fun with more friends, or maybe it’s because of some of the little things like trash disappearing a lot faster than expected, or having a ship spawned out of nowhere and we ended up colliding with it because we couldn’t steer away from in time.

It just felt like we needed to rely a lot more on luck than on skill to complete a level in this game, and as flawlessly as possible too for those precious bolts, and it kind of turned us off from the game after playing a few levels.

Community

As Trash Sailors is a co-op game, needless to say, the game is best played with friends, up to four of them. And if you’re wondering, yes, the game supports both keyboard and controllers at the same time, so you can have one player on the keyboard and the rest on controllers if you want.

Unfortunately, the game does become a lot easier if you play in groups of 4 players as the game was intended to play. We tried 2-player local co-op and well, there’s just too much stuff that needs to be done and it can get overwhelming at times, making perfect runs (no collisions) nigh impossible for us.

From the reviews, it does seem like the online multiplayer feature has some kinks that still need to be worked out so it’s probably best to stick with local co-op or single-player for now.

Graphics/ Sound

Trash Sailors has a very memorable look mainly because it features some amazing hand-drawn art, which reminded me of Don’t Starve in many ways – in my opinion, the style is very similar. The music fits the game as well though it didn’t really stand out that much. I particularly like that my character screamed in terror as he was being pushed into the waters by a wave though. That was a funny and rather unexpected moment.

Conclusion

In a nutshell, Trash Sailors may not be the next “Overcooked”, but it has some memorable art, an interesting setting and theme, as well as a fun and unique gameplay that can be enjoyed either alone or with friends – though, frankly speaking, the game is definitely miles better with friends. Unfortunately, even if you’re a fan of co-op games, Trash Sailors might just not be your cup of tea. It’s probably best to grab the game on sale or try the game out for a bit before committing, thanks to Steam’s refund policy.

New Game Added: Trash Sailors

by Aethyna Dec 29, 2021

Set in a world that's flooded by a sea of trash, Trash Sailors is a quirky co-op game where you sail through the dangerous trash-filled seas alone or with up to 3 friends, fishing out trash to be used as scraps to fix your raft or as fuel to power the engine.