The Garbage of the Future

This game has a unique UI that has a sleekness to it, but is also rather disorienting. Other reviewers (at intfiction.org) have covered this aspect well already, but I'll echo that because of the way the UI and navigation is set up, it took me a bit to realize that you have to look at the truck from three different locations to get all the items you need to proceed with your mission.

While I spent a fair amount of time with the game, replaying more times than I can count, I never managed to get the “good” ending. Even once I (eventually) realized how to do it, I got too impatient (Spoiler - click to show)just sitting in the truck waiting and went to flip the pump switch to make the disposal go faster… and got eaten. I restarted, determined to try again… and that time (Spoiler - click to show)I got eaten just when I’d finished setting everything up. I didn’t have the motivation to do it all over again, so I gave up, only discovering far too late that you can save the game—all those times I replayed from the beginning when I could have been reloading a save!

I enjoyed the spooky vibe and all the different possibilities for what you can do/what can happen. Those aspects reminded me of last year’s A Thing of Wretchedness, although here you have a concrete goal and more of a sense of stakes, which was nice. The glimpses of the world that we get are intriguing, and I enjoyed seeing the descriptions of the environment change (Spoiler - click to show)once you become a mutant—honestly, I think the Mutant Jake endings were my favorites. I also like that (Spoiler - click to show)the duct tape can be used in (at least) two different, mutually exclusive ways (tape the hose to have no leaks, tape the pump switch for speed); I’m so used to items in adventure game puzzles being single-use, so having two different options here and having to choose your trade-off was a nice design feature.

This game uses a choice-based format I haven't seen before, where clicking on highlighted words opens a pop-up window with both more text (which can have its own highlighted words that open more pop-up windows) as well as action options at the bottom.

This system is genius, and could become a very popular choice if it were easy to write in and implement.

Unfortunately, I think this game was not a good choice to showcase the engine.

The game is about trying to dispose of toxic waste near a creepy forest.

You aren't really told what to do, except to find a manual. But you can't read it since it's dark; there's a flashlight, but it dies after a few turns. So I ended up with no light source before finding the manual.

I got out and explored, and couldn't find anything but an empty forest and a truck, as well as some background things that run away if you look at them. I found a hose, but nothing to attach it to. After a while, I restarted the game and used the flashlight right away on the manual, discovering that there was a valve somewhere.

That's when I found out, by looking around, that the truck is in multiple locations, and which location you're in changes what you see on it. There was no hint of that given in the game, and that behavior is different than the vast majority of parser games I've played. Innovating isn't bad, but I'm not sure how I was supposed to guess that examining the truck in multiple locales gives different responses.

So I eventually figured things out, and was close to doing my job, and then I died. But that's okay, because that's one ending and an achievement.

A lot of the game involves waiting for a long time, but there's no way to just 'wait'. I found out you can just talk to Bill dozens of times.

Overall, I think this system is fantastic, and the author's writing has a lot of highlights, and there aren't any bugs. I just got frustrated with the gameplay style. I would absolutely love to try a wider variety of games using this system and/or written by this author though.

Adapted from an IFCOMP24 Review

For many years, my wife worked in civic Storm Water infrastructure. A lot of it is vital but unrewarding civic communication, badgering businesses for compliance when it is easier to pay fines, dealing with politicians interested in uneven enforcement and so on. Her favorite part of the job, and by extension mine, was going after Pumper Dumpers. These usually fly-by-nite Commons Parasites charge companies to pump hazardous waste under promise of proper disposal, effectively immunizing companies from liability, then just dump the waste into sewers and storm drains, uncaring of the potentially catastrophic effect to infrastructure and environment. Seriously, screw those guys.

In my favorite tale, neighbors called in a tip, and (before the days of hyper-miniaturizations) the city fab’d a fake utility box and filmed the miscreants doing their dirty deed. It was Law and Order: H2O!

This background is necessary to understand the dread this work evoked in me BEYOND its horror-tinged narrative tensions. The game MADE ME a Pumper Dumper, the lowest of the low! I’m not gonna lie, just encountering this setup in IF was a Spark all its own. It is so niche, so off in the weeds of modern life, it was a real ‘worlds collide’ moment for me.

In the end, I think I am forced to admit it was the biggest spark of the whole thing. Gameplay is a bit clumsy. For one, items are strewn about the truck that are only accessible from one location, one SIDE of the truck. This effectively creates 4 truck locations, and the text does not successfully establish this convention. Items are described in one location that are link-inaccessible, making it unclear where it would be in reach. The mechanics of its puzzle are pretty straight forward, it falls into the class of work ‘I know what I want to do, but the game is pretty opaque on how I can.’ Giving the hose two sides for example is a simplifying implementation choice that comes off clumsy to the player. So it is all about exploring, dying, restarting, and figuring out which clicks get you to the solution you have grok’d almost immediately. Works that better balance their technical challenge and cluing can elicit sparks with this gameplay, but works that are too opaque and under-described don’t. For me, this work tilted to the latter.

There is added tension in a lurking monstrous presence that threatens from multiple angles, is initially (Spoiler - click to show)repulsed by light but quickly outgrows that. Your work then is complicated by needing to avoid this threat, and further complicated by fussy machinery that needs constant goosing. The nature of the threat is nicely understated, and sets up an eventual mild charge of ‘oh, I see what that is!’ But the gameplay again makes navigating this threat more difficult than not through opacity. I think I would have been more motivated had success NOT been defined as (Spoiler - click to show)emptying your toxic tank into a lake. As it was, I kinda cheered for the monster in every pass? To the point, once I identified all the moving pieces needed to solve the puzzle, I declined a final run implementing them to get the ‘win.’ It was enough I could see how to do it, without actually seeing the Dumper (me!) escape. Screw those guys, monster fodder is what they deserve. (sidebar: there was an achievement that telegraphed an ending I would wholly endorse, though again, the mechanics of navigating the puzzle were daunting enough to discourage achieving it.)

So yeah, Sparks for sure, but very idiosyncratic sparks, very aligned to my personal life experiences. The more generally-relatable aspects of gameplay were just confounding enough to fall short.

Played: 9/27/24
Playtime: 1hr, died 5 times, got the gist
Artistic/Technical ratings: Sparks of Joy/Notably clumsy navigation and manipulation
Would Play Again?: No, experience feels complete.

Artistic scale: Bouncy, Mechanical, Sparks of Joy, Engaging, Transcendent
Technical scale: Unplayable, Intrusive, Notable (Bugginess), Mostly Seamless, Seamless