Sony’s Japan Studios’ output has been rather quiet on the PlayStation 3 – the big guns like The Last Guardian and Gran Turismo 5 seem like they’ve been in development forever. While work goes on at a brisk pace on these big budget projects, smaller divisions have been working on a steady flow of games for the PlayStation Network. The latest effort to come out of the studio is Trash Panic, which combines Tetris, realistic physics and a whole bunch of garbage into one devilishly tricky puzzle game. The high learning curve is more than enough to turn off the majority of players; but if you can overcome that, you’ll find a lot to love about Trash Panic.

Trash Panic isn’t like your ordinary puzzle game. Instead of trying to fill lines or match coloured tiles, your goal is to cram as much falling rubbish as you possibly can, into an industrial bin. Each piece of trash has its own individual physical attributes like weight, size and breakability. Smaller objects like lightbulbs, scissors and daruma dolls can be easily broken, with the debris filling gaps in the pile, while other large objects like dumbbells, tea pots and piggybanks take a lot more effort to break. Some objects like sponges can’t be broken. There’s a good variety of items in the game, starting out with common household objects before branching out into crazy stuff like mountains and giant squids.


In almost no time at all, your pile of trash is going to be in danger of overflowing. This is where you need to be careful; if three pieces of trash fall out of your bin, the game will end. One cannot help but love the way the game presents a piece of trash falling out of the bin; the game moves into slow motion, the music goes all dramatic and the little guys outside of the bin go into a panic. There is a couple of different ways to keep your trash from overflowing. Fire, explosives and decomposition balls help to eliminate broken down trash. You’ve got to be careful when managing these objects; explosives can knock objects out of the bin, fires’ heat needs to be built up by keeping the lid on but risk going out due to lack of oxygen, and decomposition balls require plenty of water. Every so often there’s also a “boss” piece of junk that will come along the line; you need to destroy this within about 10 seconds, otherwise your pile is bombarded with small yellow balls

Trash Panic may seem simple from the outset, but it has a really steep learning curve. Players need to be able to cope with dozens of failures before they’ll have come to grips with the way the game works. Even on its lowest difficulty level, completing Trash Panic is a monumental task, and if you’re not up for that challenge, you’re not going to enjoy the game. Levels do have a certain element of predictability in their junk patterns, so if you take the time to learn these patterns, you should have a lot more success. As the game goes on the levels become more complex, seemingly to the point where you will fail if you don’t map out a plan for each segment. For a game that’s meant to be a casual pick up and play experience, that’s just far too intense.

Some aspects of Trash Panic’s difficulty aren’t intentional; the game’s physics engine can be a little glitch-prone at times, causing infuriating calculation errors that will cause broken debris to hang in mid air, or a piece of trash to shoot out of your can like a rocket after a minor collision. Just one minor error can completely devastate your trash smashing campaign; acceptable on an easy level thanks to the short length, but it’s soul-crushing in the latter stages. For a game that’s so reliant on physics, it’s inexcusable for Trash Panic to have such a high glitch rate.


Six levels may seem slender, but players will need to run through each one several times before they’ll find the solution. In addition to the vanilla gameplay mode, there’s also a set of challenges that require you to accomplish specific tasks or play with certain disadvantages – only the craziest of trash smashers need apply. There’s a two player mode that puts players against each other in a contest to smash their garbage the fastest. A good distraction, but it seems like Sony could have done a lot more in terms of multiplayer.

Trash Panic has a great concept and plays pretty well, but high difficulty and frequent glitches will likely see many players quit in frustration. If you bear with it, learn the patterns for each level and overcome the glitches, you’ll find a lot to love about the game. Realistically, Trash Panic needs to be a whole lot more approachable and polished – one cannot help but think what could have been.