Death Trash - edgy post-apocalyptic isometric action-RPG - now available on Early Access

[orcinator]

In too many ARPGs, stats do little more than make the game's difficulty more unbalanced. Might as well remove em altogether.

 

[CryptRat]

There will be a Kickstarter campaign for the game.
Also looking for playtesters for the upcoming alpha versions.

 

[CryptRat]

That's cool :

https://twitter.com/talecrafter/status/933691214028853248

 

[LESS T_T]

Looks like they changed the description since: http://steamcommunity.com/app/795490/discussions/0/1692662484255822750/

We like the suggestions here and we updated the game. If you have more suggestions let us know. The game is under development and we can improve it to make a great title with the participation of the community.

"suggestions" riiight.

 

[Jimmious]

I mean of all the games out there, copying "Death Trash" ? Why?

 

[Chaotic_Heretic]

This real time game can just fuck off

 

[unfairlight]

more like indie trash lmao

 

[Infinitron]

More drama details here: https://www.pcgamer.com/death-trash-dev-calls-out-copycat-on-steam-please-rename-your-game/

Death Trash dev calls out 'copycat' on Steam: 'Please rename your game'
'FukTopia' is accused of plagiarizing Death Trash's description, and borrowing its title from one of Death Trash's locations.

Death Trash is a gross, gritty RPG set in a post-apocalyptic wasteland which happens to contain a city named Fucktopia. FukTopia, meanwhile, is a 2D fighting game which has clearly borrowed Death Trash's art style and descriptions—so much so that Death Trash developer Stephan Hövelbrinks recently accused FukTopia developer Freeminds Studios of plagiarism.

Have a look at FukTopia's description alongside the description for Death Trash:

The similarities are obvious—with some phrases directly lifted from Death Trash—and Hövelbrinks wasn't the only one that caught them. Several players criticized FukTopia on its Steam community hub. In a response to one threadfrom February 23, Freeminds again used Death Trash's wording:

"FukTopia is a concept," Freeminds said. "It is inspired in the term Dystopia, but we are creating our own concept where FukTopia is a post-apocalyptic society view with influences of cyberpunk, science, horror, the grotesque and trash humor."

Today, Hövelbrinks wrote a post of his own, asking Freeminds to change their game's name:

"Dear developers of this game, you were plagiarizing a few elements of my game Death Trash," he said. "You removed some of those elements from the Store Page. But the name of the game you also took from one of the locations in my game. Please rename your game."

At the time of writing, Freeminds has not responded to Hövelbrinks' post. However, one Steam user replied to point out that FukTopia also bears a resemblance to 2D fighter Mother Russia Bleeds, which Hövelbrinks also mentioned on in his original Twitter thread.

Mother Russia Bleeds developer Le Cartel Studio confirmed Freeminds reached out to them before posting FukTopia, and that they have no problem with the game's references but instead view them as "a tribute." Freeminds discussed this conversation in another Steam community hub post:

"One of the creators of the Mother Russia Bleeds game got in touch months ago, he said he liked our project and we can go ahead with the game," Freeminds said. "This week they officially confirmed here that there is no problem with our game because we have our own and unique ideas with characters and enemies with our own attacks and special skills. And if the official creators approved months ago we continued making the game."

However, as Hövelbrinks told me over email, Freeminds did not contact him at all.

"I wasn't contacted by this developer. As a single developer I don't have a legal department and no budget for this, so I have to rely on my own knowledge and advice from the community, so I opted for not spending my energy on this," Hövelbrinks said. "The gameplay and a few of the character styles seem to be from Mother Russia Bleeds. I can see how it might look like a tribute to that. I don't think making an inspired work is bad per se. What I personally had a problem with was direct plagiarism of elements and style, and I don't expect most people to identify them like I could.

"I do think there could be more tools on Steam to report bad behavior," he continued. "The occurrence of accusations and the developer deleting threads should be enough to flag this as a problematic situation, and if there is, maybe at least bury the title from the 'More Like This' section of the store pages."

Critically, unlike Mother Russia Bleeds, Death Trash is still unreleased and does not yet have a Steam page, meaning FukTopia's presence on the store preempts the game it's drawing from. Hövelbrinks addressed this problem in a separate Twitter thread:

"I named a location Fucktopia and that's what they call their game," he said. "A user on Steam pointed out that it's kind of lame, 'teenager cool.' Agreed, but in Death Trash this makes perfect sense because it offsets the grimdark elements, balances them. But now I have to think about the scenario that a person played that other game before, comes to Fucktopia, and thinks it's even more lame because I named it after that other post-apocalyptic game. It sabotages my design process."

Freeminds has since scrubbed some of the more obvious similarities from FukTopia's Steam page and Tumblr, though the issue of its name remains. At this time, we have been unable to directly contact Freeminds for comment.

 

[Morkar Left]

God damn, instead of all that drama they should just mention each other in the game description together with a link. Would even help to promote each other.

 

[MWaser]

God damn, instead of all that drama they should just mention each other in the game description together with a link. Would even help to promote each other.

considering the audience they're aiming for is teenage edgelords, I think the drama is better promotion for them than acting cooperatively would have been.

 

[himmy]

Who knew that the term "FukTopia" is such a hot copy that game studios are actually stealing it from other game studios.

2018 is weird.

 

[PorkBarrellGuy]

I mean of all the games out there, copying "Death Trash" ? Why?

Conspiracy theorist in me says it was a colleague or friend or something who did it deliberately to gin up some half-assed interest/controversy for "Death Trash".

 

[toro]

I think the codex will slurp this game.

 

[toro]

 

[Abu Antar]

Sneaky, sneaky...

 

[BEvers]

People who were turned off by Death Trash's nostalgic atmosphere and old fashioned gameplay mechanics might want to give it another look now:

 

[toro]

Shit needs more polish.

 

[Fowyr]

From the tweet above.

My personal inspiration was taking elements of the earlier Fallouts, Planescape Torment, Infinity Engine games and Ultima 7 and combine all that with action gameplay. But I'm a huge fan of all sorts of roleplaying games in general.

My personal highlights in the last months were playing through the Pillars of Eternity games and the action RPGs by From Software. There are also Fallout-inspired games on Steam like Atom RPG and Underrail, but haven't played them enough to say yay or nay.

 

[Yosharian]

Art style looks cool. Gameplay and story is king, however.

 

[Beowulf]

Art style looks cool. Gameplay and story is king, however.

I agree with the second part, but for me the game's art style is perfectly described in the title.
And I believe that story and overall game mechanics will follow similar pattern.

 

[LESS T_T]

Coming to Early Access early next year:

Why Early Access?
“Death Trash has already been in development for more than four years by a single developer. The game has, like other role-playing games, a certain complexity and interconnected systems and would benefit a lot from player feedback. Therefore we would like to include the community in improving this game.”

Approximately how long will this game be in Early Access?
“We're planning to keep Death Trash in Early Access for about a year. But if it takes longer than that to make a game we're happy with, we'll take more time.”

How is the full version planned to differ from the Early Access version?
“The final game will feature a semi open world with a handcrafted story campaign. Early Access will start with only the first "chapter" of that, then gradually add more story parts and locations, and keep the final part of the story for the official release. The story of the Early Access version will end at an interesting point, but don't feel complete yet. The Early Access version will miss a lot of the final locations, quests, non-player characters, enemies, items, player abilities etc. These will be added gradually over time.
Base gameplay features like combat, stealth, multiple choice dialogue and crafting are implemented already, but we'll continue finetuning them, adding more gameplay options and improve their integration with the character stats system.
We plan to continue working on the game after the official release, fixing bugs and improving usability.”

What is the current state of the Early Access version?
“Although a lot of gameplay systems are implemented already, the story campaign is not fully included yet and the playable locations and quests only amount to a few hours of playtime. The existing systems might also have bugs, lack options and progression.
The game features replayability through story and gameplay choices, but if "hours of gameplay" is an important metric to you, you should wait until this game is finished.
The splitscreen co-op is implemented in the Early Access version as a very basic variant and needs a lot of more feedback and design iterations.”

Will the game be priced differently during and after Early Access?
“We plan to price the game a bit higher once when leaving Early Access.”

How are you planning on involving the Community in your development process?
“We are planning to improve all systems of the game through player feedback. These include ranged and melee combat, stealth, character builds through stats and abilities, crafting and more. We're open to story, quest and NPC suggestions too, but will naturally keep tighter control on that to keep a consistent tone.
Players will be able to tell us any kind of feedback and ideas through the Steam Forums, the official Death Trash Discord, Twitter and Facebook. There's also a simple bug reporting tool in the game itself.”

 

[LESS T_T]

 

[Diggfinger]

This game has more F-bombs than AoD. Which is alot.

I'm too sensitive for this, makes my ulcer act up

 

[V_K]

Looks like someone didn't get their sweet Epic monies. I wonder why.

 

[Morblot]

Does it still feature Puke Town?