Skip to main content

Death Trash Is A Grimier, Scarier, Nastier Fallout

Horror, sex, and trash talk

Death Trash [official site] might be the Fallout game for people who wish Bethesda's post-nuclear world were a whole lot grimier, scarier, and swearier. I've been following development for a while but a couple of nights ago I had a nightmare featuring images from the devblog and that means it's probably time to bring the post-apocalyptic RPG to your attention. It's a game in which giant bleeding heads make dire predictions, Lovecraftian entities lurk beneath the surface and in which "Fuck off" seems to be a common dialogue option.

Just about all of the images - several of which are animated - at the blog are good enough to maintain my interest in the game. It's a grotesque setting, packed with radioactive body horror and conversations about shit and blood. Whether that'll translate into gross-out sniggers and a grubbily believable pisspunk fantasy isn't clear - the whole thing could still be charmless and grating - but I'm happy to see something that deviates from the too-clean aftermaths that I'm becoming accustomed to.

Death Trash is appealingly nasty and anxious, like Barry Godber's artwork for the Court of the Crimson King, but with extra snot and the sort of bad attitude punk bands used to crave. It's the work of solo developer Stephan Hövelbrinks and the art and world-building aren't the only interesting things about it. Inspiration for the 'living world' and narrative comes from lofty sources:

"Death Trash is a modern post-apocalyptic roleplaying game with influences of cyberpunk, science fiction, horror, the grotesque, sex and trash-talk humor. It features a world full of dialogue and unique characters. Use shotguns, psi powers and eloquent talking to survive in this hostile wasteland. Death Trash is still at an early stage of development and the next step will be a playable prototype.

"Inspired by the roleplaying classic Ultima 7 with it's focus on a living world as well as the narrative heavy Planescape: Torment, he knew this world had to be created as a mixture of both."

Yes. I want to see more.

Oh, and this guy reminds me of that hitch-hiking robot that people were sad about recently.

Read this next