One man’s trash is another Goblin’s treasure, and Trash Goblin is certainly a treasure in my eyes. Developed by Spilt Milk Studios, Trash Goblin is a relaxing shop-management game set in a fantasy world. It first flew across my radar at the Access-Ability Summer Showcase, and has since tickled my interest. I simply must uncover the treasures in this self-titled trash game.
Let’s Talk Trash
Trash Goblin is all about — you guessed it — trash. You work and sleep in a shop owned by your not-boss Aimon (who hates being called “boss,” but is essentially your boss). The mechanics are fairly straightforward and the game does an excellent job of introducing you to them.
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It all takes place in a singular room, from which you have four options: the Work Bench, the Customer Desk, the Shopkeeper, and your Personal Space. Each station will serve you in different ways, whether it be sourcing goods for customers, talking to customers, upgrading tools, or passing into the next day.
The game is broken up into days, which are then divided into six time slots, and it’s up to you how you want to tackle it. You might spend one slot chiseling some trash to find an item to sell, and then another cleaning that item so it’s ready for your customer. Managing your time is all part and parcel of the gameplay loop.
Some customers will request that you sell them a clean object, requiring extra time and work to prepare, while others won’t mind about the condition of the requested item. You may even get requests for specialty items that require two or more pieces of trash to be combined.
The customers are reasonably interesting characters in and of themselves. Many will give you a little exposition as to why they are at your shop and why they need a specific item. Others may even return, and dialogue options are available to acknowledge this.
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My favourite character so far is Donoval, a fabulous lizard who is seemingly obsessed with bed pans… for totally non-weird reasons, I promise.
With the money made from sales, you can upgrade your shop. Whether it be decorating the walls, buying a bigger workbench, or upgrading your tools — there is plenty to spend your hard-earned pennies on. For me, decorating took precedence over everything else!
The icing on this delicious little indie-cake has to be the game’s audio. The music, ambiance, and character voices are one step removed from ASMR. It might be strange to say of a video game, but it nearly put me to sleep… But in a good way! Trash Goblin truly earns its ‘relaxing’ Steam tag.
Let’s Take Out The Trash
While a delightful little indie game, Trash Goblin isn’t without its flaws.
Most noticeably, the game lacks an option to cancel a customer’s request. Whether you simply don’t want to fulfill the request, or, like me, you hit a bug where the customer won’t accept the item they are asking for, there needs to be an option to back out of the exchange. You can overcome this by quitting the game and re-loading your save file, but that’s a real pain; a cancel button would circumvent this bug.
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The game reminds me of Sticky Business, a cosy indie about running a sticker shop, where interactions with returning customers and their request notes were what drove me to keep playing. One character might request stickers as a way of building a friendship with another person, and you play a part in those two people coming together as they request more and more from your shop.
Trash Goblin shares some of these elements, such as returning customers, but they aren’t fleshed out in a way that keeps me coming back for more. I was left wondering what the goal of the game was? To spend my hard-earned coins to decorate my entire workspace? What happens after that? Is there more to the story? This is yet to be seen.
I hope that during early access Trash Goblin can flesh out its characters and develop more of a through-line with each of them that would keep me engaged.
Trash For All (Accessibility)
Featuring in the Access-Ability Summer Showcase, I had high hopes for the accessibility features of Trash Goblin, and it has not disappointed me.
Rejoice, my fellow arthritic brethren! There is an option to use a ‘hover’ mode to allow the tools to work by simple moving them across the screen, rather than needing to hold down a button or click multiple times. This feature is music to my ears — or relief to my arthritic fingers.
However, the feature could use a little tweaking. Every time I boot the game up, I have to re-set these settings, even if they’re already selected. For some reason, the game defaults to ‘click’ instead of my pre-selected option.
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The game lives up to its promises, providing slow gameplay with no fail-states or fast action.
There’s also the inclusion of highlighted characters; when hovering over a customer, not only does that customer change colour to represent that they are being selected, but a stripey pattern overlay also moves across them. I can only imagine how this seemingly simple feature would benefit so many players with sight impairment, opening the game up to an even larger player base.
Trash or Treasure?
If you like cosy games, then Trash Goblin must make its way onto your wishlist. This relaxing shop-management simulator shows a lot of promise, from chill gameplay to thoughtful accessibility features, and I can’t wait to see how the community receives it.
The game may be called ‘trash’, but to me, it is a treasure.
Trash Goblin is out now in early access on PC.
Early access to Trash Goblin was supplied to Quest Daily for the purpose of this preview.
