The Steam Next Fest opened the floodgates to literally hundreds of free demos this month—the vast majority of which were taken offline when the festival closed its doors last Tuesday. Some, however, did not, such as Stephan Hövelbrinks’ deliciously meaty pixelated RPG Death Trash.
Following a teaser at the PC Gaming Show, Hövelbrinks finally let us enter into Death Trash’s universe after years of drip-feeding snippets of the horrific, post-apocalyptic RPG on his Twitter account. What we received was an aggressive action RPG with a setting reminiscent of the earlier Fallouts, but scarier—a butcher’s shop wasteland teeming with gibs, vomit, and gigantic meaty squid beasts.
Death Trash wasn’t only one of our favorite Steam Next Fest demos; it was also one of our favorite E3 games overall. Stephen said it at our E3 Game Awards “a wonderful example of how, despite being a traditional (and maybe overdone) style, pixel art can nonetheless surprise and please. I like how shady everything appears. It has a nasty look about it.”
The Death Trash demo is now available for free on Steam. On August 5th, the game will go into early access, revealing the whole first chapter of the gore-soaked universe. Hövelbrinks intends to maintain the game in early access for a year, adding additional chapters, places, characters, missions, and goods before releasing it completely in 2022.
