Trash the Planet (Press Kit)
A downloadable Press Kit
Fact sheet
- Developer: This Game Is Haunted
- Release Date: March 15th, 2021
- Platform: Desktop web browser
- Price: Free
- Play Now: trashtheplanetgame.com / thisgameishaunted.itch.io/trash-the-planet
Game description
Trash the Planet is a resource-management game that subverts clicker mechanics to serve its narrative rather than manipulate the player.
You play as a group of raccoons who start out collecting trash and end up ruling the planet. Help raccoon society evolve at an alarming rate, marvel as the numbers get bigger, and learn how to manipulate the stock market with absolutely no consequences.
Key features
- Enjoy a guilt-free clicker that was created specifically not to idle, waste your time, or hijack any of your brain chemicals
- Manipulate a stock market with MOBA-like abilities that are designed to make rampant greed as fleetingly enjoyable as in real life
- Chill out to more than 40 minutes of original electronic grooves from composer Bryvox
- Consult with an eclectic cast of raccoon advisors, including a cool teacher, an easily flustered doctor, an avowed anime lover, and a raccoon who quite literally worships trash
- Make challenging, compelling moral choices using our one-of-a-kind Limerick Finishing System (LFS)
- Consider the fate of our planet. Ruminate on how bad things are. Come on — I know you're already doing it. Why not let our game help?
Gameplay description, setting, and synopsis
Trash the Planet is set in a world where raccoons accidentally gain sapience, reverse-engineer human society by studying garbage, and summarily take over the world.
You'll play as the raccoons across five discrete acts as the world grows trashier and gameplay systems gradually build in complexity. You'll begin by making small choices about where to allocate raccoons in your community, and eventually you'll be manipulating an entire stock market to own the entire means of trash production on Earth. At the game’s climax, the moral and ecological debts of the raccoons’ actions come due and they have to decide what’s worth saving.
Our aim with the gameplay was to remove the idle, time-wasting nature of the clicker/incremental game genre while using its cause-and-effect language to tell a compelling story and retaining the fun of optimizing and scaling systems. We pulled from many different sources of design inspiration to keep things engaging and exciting: in Acts 1 and 2, you'll manage resources to progress through a tech tree similar to a real-time strategy game. In Act 3, you'll manipulate a stock market using an ability bar and upgrade options similar to a MOBA or an MMORPG.
Our goal was to create a game where the story we’re telling and the game you’re playing are thematically and mechanically inseparable. In our minds, the addictive nature of most clickers is a direct reflection of capitalism's constant need to devour and grow — what better game system to use to critique it?
This Game Is Haunted
This Game Is Haunted is a team of friends in Portland, Oregon who have been making games for a couple of years. We all met through the tech industry but have creative aspirations outside of it. We aim to question and reinterpret commercial genres and trends to create games we've never seen before.
We make games that are haunted by our own experiences and creative impulses. We're a small team run in a collective style, so hopefully you'll feel every person's intent and unique personality when you play our games.
Trash the Planet is the largest game we've ever made. It took around a year and a half to produce in our spare time on weekends and after work.
Press quotes and awards
- IGF entrant 2021
- Showcased at Portland Retro Gaming Expo 2019
Links to download assets
See download link below.
Contact information
- Twitter - @thisgamehaunted
- Instagram - thisgamehaunted
- Email - thisgameishaunted@gmail.com
Status | In development |
Category | Other |
Rating | Rated 4.8 out of 5 stars (5 total ratings) |
Author | thisgameishaunted |
Genre | Strategy |
Tags | Clicker, Economy, Incremental, Narrative |