Published , by Blake Morse
Published , by Blake Morse
The world of VR is full of some of the most creative and experimental gameplay experiences in the history of interactive entertainment. One company at the forefront of the future of fun and crazy is Squanch games, a dev company co-founded by Rick and Morty co-creator Justin Roiland and a team of game industry vets. Their upcoming title, Trover Saves the Universe is an epically amazing action-puzzler game that combines Roiland’s improvisational humor with its gameplay for what is truly a one-of-a-kind adventure.
You start off the game as a sad, lonely Chairorpian who recently lost their two adorable little doggies when an alien stuck them in their eye holes and unleashed some sort of destructive power. As a Chairorpian you’re basically stuck in your chair and use a very Playstation-like controller to rotate your chair or warp to certain areas. Fortunately, an alien creature named Trover shows up to help you hunt down your doggos. Trover’s motivations are definitely selfish and he appears to only be helping you to get a payday so he can go get wasted.
Whatever his motivation may be, Trover is ready to beat down any enemies that get in his way and players will use him to take care of the more active functions and puzzles that they will come across during the game. As players progress through the game they’ll discover new power babies to put in Trover’s eye holes. Each power baby has its own abilities and will eat the old power baby it’s replacing.
The power babies and eye holes aren’t even the craziest part of Trover Saves the Universe. There’s a ton of improvised humor throughout the entire game, meaning there’s a high probability that players will get lost watching various dialogs play out before moving along. For instance, during my hands-on demo, there was a news show that started playing in the area I had started in that I would’ve missed if I hadn’t gone back.
And while Trover is being billed as a PSVR experience, fans will be able to play the game on a traditional flat-screen TV without the VR functionality. Trover Saves the Universe had me laughing my ass off during the entire demo. While much of the combat was very straightforward during my brief hands-on time there’s still a lot that remains to be revealed before it hits the market in early 2019.