Indiescovered: Trash TV

As life slowly flows back into you in the form of floating colored pixels, you wake up alone. You’re a TV in a strange place, dozens of dead TVs scattered all around you. As you get your bearings, an image projects from your antennae. Your remote is missing and you must find it. Soon enough, you realize that you’re in a recycling center. Someone has thrown you out. But you won’t be resigned to this fate. You will find your remote and escape.

This is the premise for Lawrence Russell’s Trash TV, a 2D puzzle platformer that was released early last year. You see the world through what appears to be a CRT TV, not unlike the one you play as, as you help this lost TV explore the recycling center in hopes of finding its lost remote.

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The game is made up of several sets of environmental puzzles, each set taking part in a different section of the recycling center. You begin with simple puzzles. You have to jump here. You have to place this dying TV on this button. You have to throw this explosive box through a beam that will light it and onto a button then run through a door that the button opens before the box explodes and the door closes.

As you work your way through the various sections, you will be introduced to new weapons that require you to approach puzzles in new ways. In one zone, you may have to use a bow to shoot things below you that were previously unreachable due to the fact that every other gun shoots strictly horizontally. In another zone, you may have to attach timed explosives to a box on a conveyor belt to break something that you wouldn’t have otherwise been able to break.

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Each zone’s newly-introduced weapon becomes its focus. When you get the bow, puzzles revolve around using the bow and its ability to shoot downwards. When you get the timed explosives, puzzles revolve around launching yourself into the air with explosions and various timed puzzles. There are common elements, but they are each introduced into an environment where the rules change slightly from zone to zone.

It’s important to note that Trash TV is a short game, taking approximately two hours to complete the first time. The game values its brevity, looking to make sure that no part of it ever outstays its welcome. With the introduction of each new weapon or mechanic, there is a small set of puzzles and then you are funneled back to the hub world and must find your way into the next zone.

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A positive side-effect of the short play time is that the game uses all of its mechanics masterfully. There are no repeated tests to ensure that you understand the mechanics. There are no absurd challenges waiting for you. Each puzzle is well-designed, carefully ensuring that it differentiates itself from the last. You may be required to launch yourself into the air with explosions several times, but one puzzle might require you to attach the timed explosives to the wall, while another puzzle requires you to attach them to a moving target and then somehow get above it.

Granted that there are guns, it’s inevitable that there are enemies. However, Trash TV handles enemies differently. Explosions can’t kill you and neither can enemies. Instead, if you’re hit by an enemy, you will run back and forth uncontrollably for a short amount of time, your vision blurred. In order to ensure you can in fact die, enemies are usually paired with an assortment of traps that can kill anything that moves. Add in a few well-placed switches and all enemy encounters become another environmental puzzle, rather than a needless action segment.

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Death is handled in a way that I found to be fairly clever. When you die, you are sent to the nearest checkpoint. In sticking with the TV theme, this is done by automatically rewinding time to that checkpoint. During rewind, the screen is engulfed in static, as if you were rewinding a tape.

Trash TV was one of my favorite games of 2015 and with good reason. The game is presented well, combining a sleek, modern pixelated style with a commitment to its CRT TV theme. It is extremely well-paced, introducing new mechanics regularly. Each zone revolves around new set of mechanics that are made possible by new weapons, ensuring that older mechanics are never overused. It’s a game that uses its time extremely well and that is something that I unfortunately don’t get the chance to say often enough.

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Trash TV is available on Steam for $6.99