You might have missed Steam Next Fest during E3 week, the online game festival that featured over 700 demos. While nearly all of those demos were removed from Steam at the end of the event, at least one remains — and it’s one you absolutely should not miss. Death Trash is a rare game that combines aspects of many different franchises and genres yet manages to be something completely original. Equal parks Cyberpunk, Bloodborne, and Fallout, Death Trash simultaneously checks all the boxes while breaking the mold. If you’ve ever wanted to make friends with a Kraken made of meat, stop reading and go download the Death Trash demo on Steam ASAP.
Death Trash is a pixel-art isometric action-RPG heavily inspired by the original Fallout games. After creating your character and allotting your stat and skill points on your character sheet, you begin the game by being ejected from society due to a mysterious illness. As you make your way out of the underground bunker — the only home you've ever known — you might be mistaken in thinking this is simply a Fallout remake. What’s waiting for you on the surface, however, is quite a bit different from anything Fallout has to offer.
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The first character you encounter is indeed an enormous monster made of meat that seems to be growing out of a cliffside. This Fleshkraken talks in a strange, fragmented way, but you’re able to gather that it wants you to bring it some “friends.” This is Death Trash’s call to action, as it were.
The Fleshkraken isn’t anomalous by any stretch. Piles of writhing meat and lakes of blood cover nearly every inch of the surface world. As you explore, you’ll find both harmless meat creatures that slither along the ground, as well as humanoid mutants that attack on sight.
There’s only a few areas to explore in the demo, but each one is densely packed with atmosphere, world-building, and obscene body horror. There’s quite a few oddball characters to encounter, which is understandable considering where they live. But there’s also some pretty disturbing details in the early parts of the game that hint at the occult. In the one main town you can visit, there's a statue of a mutant in the town center where the people have left offerings of meat. Almost everyone talks about sunlight a lot, but not in a jovial, Solaire-like way. The demo ends just as you discover that you are, of course, the Chosen One in this apocalyptic meat world, but whatever it is you’re chosen for remains a mystery. Whatever happens next is almost certainly going to be disgusting, and I can’t wait to play it.
One of the things I really love about the gameplay in Death Trash is how intentional you need to be with every combat situation. It feels a bit like Hades or Hyper Light Drifted since you can dodge roll and aim in 360 degrees, but it's nowhere near the pace of those games. Stealth is often the best approach to combat since you’ll get an attack modifier for backstabs, and engaging with more than one enemy at the same time is almost always certain death, at least in the early levels. This means you really have to plan your moves carefully, play to your strengths, and sometimes use the environment to your advantage. While trying to enter a bunker that had been taken over by scavengers, I was able to kite the guards into landmines that surrounded the exterior and use their own defenses against them. Every encounter in the demo has a variety of ways it can be approached using different weapons, abilities, and cybernetic upgrades.
There’s also a really strong sense of individual play style, similar to what you’d find in Fallout. You can put your points in blunt or sharp melee weapons, as well as pistols, rifles, and energy weapons. Ammo is incredibly limited though, so even if you dump all of your points into rifles you won’t be able to just blast your way through the game. This is especially true in multiplayer. Death Trash has two-player co-op by way of Steam Remote Play Together, but items and resources need to be shared between players. This way, one player can build towards certain proficiencies like melee, hacking, and stealth, while the other builds towards different skills like bartering, animalism, and occultism — the use of abilities that communicate with the flesh.
But it’s really the presentation that sets Death Trash apart from the crowd. Pixel art has been done to death, but Death Trash breathes new life into the style with tons of texture, depth, age, and of course, meat. The world of Death Trash is one of the most horrible things I’ve ever seen and simultaneously one of the most beautiful. I’m equally parts disturbed and enchanted by this game, and I can’t wait to discover the secrets of the Flesh Nexus when Death Trash launches on Steam this August.
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