The Garbage of the Future

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