Trash Panic (PSN) Impressions: Tetris’ Dirty Brother-In-Law

It might’ve been overshadowed by the flurry of new information, demos, and trailers released earlier this week thanks to Sony’s constant string of PSN updates from E3, but Trash Panic was released on PSN last night.  Here’s what I think.  For those uninformed, Trash Panic is a physics-based puzzle game for the Playstation Network developed by Sony Computer Entertainment Japan.  Originally titled Gomibako when it was released in Japan this past March, it features a rather unusual take on the Tetris format.  In Trash Panic, you won’t be controlling falling Tetrads; instead, you’ll be controlling falling pieces of – you guessed it – garbage.  The scope of the game has also changed slightly; instead of lining up your objects to make them disappear, your objective is to fit as much garbage into your massive pastel blue trash can as you possibly can without spilling too much onto the floor.

Each of the five stages in Trash Panic has a set number of pieces of garbage you’ll have to deal with, each one following a set theme, be it school supplies and office equipment in one level, or actual pieces of the countryside in the other.  The trick to Trash Panic is that, no matter what you do, you can’t simply pile objects on top of each other and hope to survive; the only way to win is to use the different properties of your garbage to break, smash, burn and otherwise obliterate your accumulated refuse into a more compact form.  This sounds simple, but it’s more difficult than you might think; some objects, such as coat hangers or pencils will break easily, while heavier objects such as TVs, temple bells, and mountains will be considerably more difficult to deal with, requiring similarly heavy objects, fire, or explosives to take them out of the picture.  Breaking garbage is essentially the key to the game, as if three undamaged pieces of garbage of any kind, from tennis balls to mountains, hit the ground outside of the can, it’s game over.

Complicating things even further is the addition of “Mottainai”, certain marked pieces of garbage; engagement rings, trophies, uneaten cakes and several other objects that were thrown away accidentally appear during the game’s stages.  Destroying these results in a penalty of several large objects raining down into your garbage can in an attempt to make clearing the stage more difficult, while preserving them until they can be extracted results in a bonus at the end of the stage.  These marked objects can act as a turning point for an otherwise solid playthrough, as breaking one even by accident can throw a diamond monkey wrench into your garbage-cleaning efforts.  Fire, water, decomposition and oil also play major parts in the game’s later levels, giving players more ways to dispose of trash, but also more potential hazards to overcome as they play.

Trash Panic features five levels of increasing difficulty spread across three difficulty levels, as well as unlockable challenge stages, an offline multiplayer mode, Trophy support, as well as a direct Youtube upload feature.  While I haven’t played enough of the game yet to form a true opinion on it (I’ve only managed to clear Easy Mode so far), I have managed to upload a quick video of the first level in the game for you to take a look at.  As far as puzzle games go, Trash Panic is certainly unique in its charm and presentation, though I’ll need a bit more time with the gameplay to decide what I think of it overall.