If Dumpster Gang is anything to go by, the only creature potentially more rascally than a goose (untitled or otherwise) is a raccoon. Even worse if there’s four of them, all working together to raid houses and farms, with only John Exterminator standing in their way.
With a demo now available as part of Steam Next Fest, and the game due out on 3rd December, I grabbed a small group together to take on its introductory raids.
Setting out on that first mission, you’re handed a bunch of tasks to complete while raiding a suburban home: ause a bit of a ruckus in the garden and wreck things, break into the home and clog the toilets with too much loo roll, get a brew on chug down cups of coffee, and just outright steal their lawnmower! You know, harmless pranks!
It doesn’t take long for John Exterminator to rock up in his van, drop a cage and then stomp around trying to catch you, while making the kinds of man grunts not heard since Home Improvement slipped out of syndication. Avoiding him is somehow both easy and really difficult. You can easily sprint away and, if you find a little cubby hole to break line of sight, wait until John stomps away, but if you can’t get away and run out of stamina, John will catch you and give you an almighty kick.
Now, before you get on the blower to the RSPCA, these raccoons give as good as they get! In fact, they’re downright devious in their abilities, able to clamber up and over walls and fences, pick up objects and throw them, and in certain cases, use them as weapons to fend off John and free your captive pals. In fact, that’s probably about half of the fun in this game, as you get to see a buddy turn up holding a boombox and then just fling it at John to stun him and you all scurry away.
Yeah, it’s another friendslop game, trying to channel some of the vibes that made this pseudo-genre so popular over the last few years. It’s all about messing around and toying with the game, and just being a bit silly within gameplay and ideas that play fast and loose with how they’re implemented.
There’s hats to find and wear that can let you jump higher, be resistant to having things thrown at you, and the like. There’s nonsense like being able to fly around in the goofiest possible way when holding a chicken. You can slap your buddies with an emote, breaking their lockpicking animation when trying to free you, which is about as self-defeating as it is funny.
From the demo, there’s fun to be had in that fashion, but it does feel like the core gameplay loop could be quite limited. I don’t get the sense that the Exterminator is adapting in that Hello Neighbor style, and while the second map had some different goals – like breaking into the farm’s barn to milk a cow and then splash that milk on the farmer’s bed – it was already feeling a bit like more of the same.
And that can be totally fine. Dumpster Gang has a nice and silly style to it, the raccoons are cute and silly in some of the shenanigans you can get up to, and it embraces that playful silliness of some of the best co-op experiences out there. But I do still hope that there’s more variety to see and feel through more levels as the game launches in December.
