Hands On Preview: Trash

Hand's On Preview: Trash Developer: Inhuman Games Genre: Strategy > RTS Players: 1-24 Planned Release: Summer/Fall 2005 System Requirements: Windows 98/Me/2000/XP, 600 MHz CPU, 128 RAM, DirectX 8.0

After five years of development and many months of closed beta, one of the more ambitious indie strategy projects, a post-apocalyptic 3D RTS named Trash, has finally reached the stage of public beta testing. Although one of the races, the Machines, has been dropped along the way, significantly speeding up the development process, Trash still offers two sides to play with - the Humans and the Mutants. Each one has a distinct play style and new technology research methods. The Machine race is planned in a possible sequel.

The future, according to Inhuman Games, is not quite the bleak, washed out future seen in the Mad Max trilogy or the Fallout series. Instead, they bring us a more radioactive and campy vision of things to come, similar to games like Bad Blood or even pulp comic book covers from the late fifties. Devoid of too-complex game mechanics, which usually don't even matter that much because experienced RTS players tend to develop very simplistic powergaming tactics, Trash features the basic "Orcs vs. Humans" gameplay while still possessing some unique strategy elements.

Just like the name might suggest, the game revolves around trash - the main resource you'll be using in the post-apocalyptic future. From Human units such as gatling cars, motorcycles equipped with flamethrowers, and gunships to Mutant-controlled giant roaches and all kinds of twisted organic creatures, everything is made from, and when destroyed turns back into, trash. But that's not the only thing you'll be harvesting. Scattered throughout the map, there are static toxic waste, precious metal and gas sites and people-inhabited huts. Each location allows you to build a specific set of structures on top of it, which limits the number of possible technology enhancements and encourages battles for territory occupation. Lastly, there is the matter of power which must be supplied to all of your buildings. This is accomplished by a system of interconnecting pipes transferring electricity produced by windmill generators or nuclear power plants. The pipes also allow for some advanced multiplayer strategies - through them, resources and technology can be shared by different players on the same team, and power/supply lines can be cut off by destroying a portion of the pipe system.

It seems that Trash will be a game that's heavily multiplayer-oriented, as there are no single player story-related missions of any kind - all you can do without an actual person to play against is fight the AI on the same maps you play on in the multiplayer mode. Also, most of the design goals are geared towards having a good time in multiplayer (like using warp gates, unlimited upgrades and other features to ensure that the game won't end up in a boring stalemate), and the maps, although there are not a lot of them yet, are randomly generated and scaled according to the number of players in a specific match.

Even though a professional quality RTS is quite hard to develop for an independent team, considering the harshness of today's gaming market, so far Trash looks like it's going to be a fun multiplayer experience. The designers seem to know what the players want in terms of balanced gameplay, and the announced licensing scheme is surprisingly liberal - it is supposed to allow 24 users per single key, ensuring the ability to play Trash with friends without worrying too much about the exact number of copies your LAN gaming partners own.

As announced by the developers, it won't be long until the testing period is over (open beta is planned to last less than a month), so there's not much time left to get involved in the final bug-squashing and polishing process. The beta version is, however, still downloadable. You should definitely check out the Inhuman Games website, if only to preview Trash and wait for the upcoming demo and the full version, which will be available through a digital download purchase.