It seems as though the PS3 has been going strong with downloadable games as of late. Most notably, the announcement of Fat Princess at E3 08 really caught my attention, and along with the likes of Echochrome, Ratchet & Clank Future: Quest for Booty, flOw and Everyday Shooter, it is quickly establishing a presence when it comes to the Playstation Network.

So imagine my surprise when I heard about a little puzzle game at TGS called Gomibako, which means "trash can" in Japanese. On display at Sony's booth, the game is all about stacking up items in a giant can while not leaving any space, so they can be cleared out by little on-screen workers. It sounds a lot like Tetris-meets-Japanese garbage disposal laws, as there will be burnable items and unburnable items. The burnable items can be ignited by a sword that is on fire and disposed of that way, opening up more space for more junk in your can. Items seem to range from tiny pieces of paper to whole trucks; let more than three items fall out of the can, and you lose.

There are also apparently "wasteful" items you can't just drop into the bin, lest you cause your little workers more hassle. Oh, and the whole thing apparently runs with realistic physics, so if you drop your truck down onto a giant pile of cans, you might cause them to go flying everywhere, including right out of the big garbage can. Once you complete a level, you get "Eco" and "Ego" points; "Eco" = good things you did and "Ego" = bad things you did. Pretty simple, huh?

While I want to see this game in action first, it sounds incredibly fun, looks great, and is yet another reason I wish I could actually afford a PS3 right now. I don't know if this will leave Japan, but we can be hopeful that Gomibako - maybe under a different name - will see a release on the North American Playstation Store some day in the future.