Here comes the clean-up crew
(This
review contains minor spoilers!)
Have you ever played a type of game
that you didn’t know you wanted, but afterwards you can’t keep your hands off
it? For me, that game is Diaries of a Spaceport Janitor. This game is both extremely
simplistic and extremely repetitive, yet for whatever reason it has me hooked.
So what’s the story? You’re a little
blue “girlbeast” who has been hired to clean up the filthy spaceport you’re
trapped on. You do this by picking up all manner of trash, from your average
spills and lost papers to alien bones and worthless gems. You can either burn
the garbage in your portable incinerator or hang on to them for later use,
which is helpful if you find something with some worth. If you find a valuable
treasure, you can trade it in at a specific vendor for some extra cash. At the
end of the day you return home, and the next morning you get paid a small
amount of credits you can use to satiate your hunger at a local food stall.
Then you do the whole thing over again.
Oh, and there’s a screaming skull that
constantly follows you and you have to figure out how to get rid of it.
Probably should’ve mentioned that.
So what could possibly make a game
about walking around a spaceport and picking up garbage fun? Well, it’s
actually just that that’s keeping me hooked. It’s surprisingly cathartic to
clean up the town, and very rewarding when you finally accomplish a goal and
get further in your quest to remove the cursed skull. But honestly, you could
remove the overall quest and I’d still find the game entertaining. Most days
involve walking around the spaceport, picking up trash, getting something to
eat, and going to bed with very little interaction with the main plot. And you
know what? I love it. I love all the creative and funny descriptions the
garbage has, and I love the design of the spaceport and its alien inhabitants.
The presentation is the other thing
Diaries has going for it, having an adorable and unique art style as well as
one of the best soundtracks I’ve heard all year. The 16-bit world of the
spaceport is large and memorable, with lots of shops and neon signs dotting the
landscape. There are even large structures that can be used as landmarks as
well as goddess statues where you can leave offerings in an attempt to increase
your luck. In my playtime I haven’t come across a significant change in luck
after leaving items at the statues, but that might just be me. The spaceport
comes alive the most during the weekly music festival, as the entire town comes
out to sing super catchy and upbeat alien songs all day.
The size of the spaceport does lead to
a pretty big problem, however. You’re given no map of any description, and the
sheer size of the town will leave you completely lost more often than not. No
joke, I often had to allocate time out of my in-game day just to figure out
where the hell I was and how to get to where I needed to be. For example,
there’s an NPC living in an alleyway necessary to your quest of removing the
skull. Despite visiting him twice before, it took me no less than three in-game
days to find him a third time. It’s not that he’s particularly hidden or out of
the way, it’s that everything around you just looks pretty much the same and it’s easy to get disoriented and lost. The game tries to remedy
this by adding coloured arrows to the floor that point to the different
districts, but they are of little help if you’re trying to find something
specific. The best you can do is try and remember which district your
destination is in and work from there.
The other major problem comes in the
form of the meters you need to keep maintained in order to continue your
garbage mission. There are three: food, rest, and gender. Food and rest are
what you’d expect. Eat so you don’t starve and sleep at the end of the day. To
add an extra layer you can’t sleep if you’re hungry, so it’s recommended you
keep some spare change around for a late-night snack just in case. Gender is…less
standard. I’m guessing they’re trying to make a witty observation on navigating
gender in the workplace, but with that aside this is not a good mechanic. When
your gender starts to deteriorate you must track down a gender stall and shell
out 10 of your hard-earned credits to replenish it. If you don’t, the text
boxes become nigh-unreadable until you recharge. It’s frustrating to be having
a good time collecting trash when suddenly needing to stop what you’re doing
and find a gender stall just so the game will stop looking awful. If the
mechanic wasn’t called “gender” and was instead called “space tax” or “alien
brain slug prevention potion”, I’m almost certain the devs would’ve removed it
for disrupting the gameplay.
Despite these problems, Diaries of a
Spaceport Janitor feeds that simple joy of cleaning up and making things pretty
the same way as Super Mario Sunshine. The graphics and music are delightful and
the trash-cleaning gameplay is surprisingly a complete blast. But in all
honesty, too many things get in the way of you having an uninterrupted good
time for me to wholly recommend it. If you’re the type of person who likes bizarre
and different indie games and doesn’t mind getting lost or meter management,
Diaries of a Spaceport Janitor is one you should definitely look into.
FINAL SCORE
7/10
Good
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