TGS 08: Hands-on with Gomibako, the game about trash

This game is rubbish… literally! Among the many PlayStation Network games Sony had lined up at TGS 2008, new title Gomibako sounded the most interesting. The screens we saw showed a cross section of a trashcan gradually being piled full of trash in a junkyard, making us wonder how a game that looked like this would even be played.

The point of Gomibako is to cleanly dispose of trash by smashing and burning it. Players start with an empty trashcan in this trash yard. A conveyor belt runs along the top of the screen, and random pieces of trash — toilet bowls, stuffed animals, post office boxes — enter the top of the can, one piece of refuse at a time. Your goal is to place this piece in the trashcan so that as many pieces as possible can fit.

My first piece was a violin. Pressing the X or Square button let me rotate the piece, and the triangle button slammed it to the bottom of the trashcan. The trash can fell with a thud but didn’t break. A wooden barrel came along, and I dropped that on top. A toilet bowl came along after that, and I was able to drop it on top of the wooden items to crush them.

It seems that the trick is to think about the type of material your trash piece is. Wood will burn and break easy, while a broken television might break if it hits against something hard, but it may not burn as easily. You’ll want to carefully position each piece so that it either slams into something that will break it, or lays next to something that will burn with it. Eventually, a stick of fire will come along the conveyor belt. Your goal is to strategically have the trash fashioned within the trashcan so that the flame will spread easiest. As with most puzzle games, you’re looking to lay your trash pieces in a way that will bring about a chain reaction. If your placement is bad, trash will spill over out of the can and you’ll lose the game.

After dropping a few items into the can, I saw that most of the barrels weren’t breaking for me. It wasn’t until a large pointed piece of metal fell into the can that I could slam the barrel directly onto this point. Falling onto this, the barrels broke and splintered perfectly, allowing me to pack more trash into the can. I worked to move combustibles onto the left side and metal and others on the right. When fire finally came along, I was able to drop it onto the wood, and the whole can lit up. As this wood burned down, a “boss” character came along the belt. This boss was a small truck! I was barely able to drop it into the wood side, but the fire wasn’t doing much to it, and the can was in danger of overflowing. Luckily a large propane tank came along, and with some careful placement, the truck, tank, and wood all glowed red from fire. Minutes later, a fantastic explosion incinerated everything in the can, sending a mushroom of fire out of the top.

Even though Gomibako looks and sounds strange at first, playing it showed me that it’s a clever and silly twist on the classic piece-dropping puzzle game. I found myself laughing out loud as I threw trash in and watched it break against other pieces. Much of this game’s charm is looking out for the types of strange trash to come down the line, which is much more entertaining than watching boxes or bubbles. And slamming pieces into others and watching where they fall is certainly more interesting than simply dropping them into place. Gomibako is quite fun, and we’re hoping to burn more trash on the PlayStation Network soon. Release dates and prices are TBD for now.