Trover Saves The Universe review

The creator was one half of the duo behind a cult TV show, so it’s no surprise this is one of the funniest games I’ve played in a long time.

You control purple alien Trover, who is about as excited about getting dragged into things as your character is.

A person who won’t leave their loungeroom chair and a monster with living gummy babies for eyes are an unlikely duo to hold the fate of the universe in their hands, yet that is the premise of a new offbeat and hilarious game.

Developed by Squanch Games for PC, PlayStation VR and PlayStation 4, Trover Saves The Universe has the distinction of being one of the funniest games I’ve played in a long time, even if the humour doesn’t carry the game all the way to the end.

Right away, you can tell Trover Saves The Universe shares a lot of DNA with TV animated comedy Rick & Morty — the art style, the humour and the general aesthetic — and that’s because the game has been created by Justin Roiland, who is half of the creative duo behind the show and also does the voices for its main characters.

You control purple alien Trover, who is about as excited about getting dragged into things as your character is.

Trover himself is basically a more cynical and frustrated Morty, and his Space Boss is pretty clearly inspired by Rick. If you’re already opening Steam or the PlayStation Store as a result of that, I think we can agree you’re going to have a good time here.

The game casts you as a member of the race known as “Chairorpeans”, who for some unexplained reason live their entire lives in floating chairs and never walk. You are the owner of a pair of unremarkable small dogs, and one day a large beaked entity named Glorkon shows up, steals the dogs, shoves them into his eye sockets and claims he is now the most powerful being in the universe before vanishing.

Shortly afterwards, purple alien Trover shows up at your doorstep (as you’re watching the tutorial, hilariously presented as a cheesy daytime soap opera on your house’s TV) and says he’s been roped into helping you; basically he’ll be under your command while you two go and rescue your missing dogs, defeat Glorkon, and save the universe.

Interdimensional being Glorkon has kidnapped your dogs to use as power sources in his eye sockets. It makes marginally more sense in the game.

A series of wacky and twisted adventures ensue, encompassing everything from beating up miniature Glorkon clones to intervening in a neighbourhood dispute over housing zones to infiltrating a castle guarded by two particularly self-assured guards; keep an ear out for The Mighty Boosh’s Rich Fulcher as one of the characters later in the game too.

The galaxy, it turns out, is a very strange place indeed.

The game’s abstract and often profane humour isn’t for everyone, but if it’s your thing (and it’s definitely mine), you’ll really enjoy it — indeed, I often found myself just standing around listening to the bad guys rambling on about inane or weird subjects, because some of it was so entertaining. The game breaks the fourth wall on numerous occasions, and Trover’s frustrated commentary on what was happening was well done too.

The issue is that the amusing commentary and jokes can’t help sustain the game on their own, and by the end of the game I found I just wasn’t laughing as much as I had been at the start, simply because the basic themes started to get a bit repetitive after several hours of more or less the same thing.

Trover can defeat the game’s assorted and quirky enemies by hitting them with his energy sword.

It’s just as well the game isn’t especially long because gameplay wise, there’s nothing remarkable here — it’s a 3D puzzle/platformer game — but it does VR very well, never feeling like a gimmick or an afterthought.

I found the game to play extremely well both as an immersive VR title, and a conventional ‘displayed on your TV’ game — it’s great to see a game so effectively using both mediums (and if you’re playing in standard mode, there’s at least one instance where the characters remark how amazing a scene would look in VR).

The developers have also announced they’ll be releasing free downloadable content “until it doesn’t make sense to do that anymore”, with the trade-off that the game won’t be reduced in price anytime in the foreseeable future.

The levels in the game look really good, especially in VR.

Trover Saves The Universe knows it’s about having a good time and not taking itself seriously and I really appreciated that and enjoyed the game’s unconventional approach and story.,

If, like me, you’re a fan of Rick & Morty then this is a must-buy; but if you’re not familiar with the show or Roiland’s humour then you may be in for a surprise — so maybe watch a few episodes of the show first (it’s on Netflix) and decide if that’s something you could enjoy being exposed to for six hours or so.

Royce Wilson writes about games and technology for news.com.au; continue the conversation on Twitter @RoyceWilsonAU

Originally published as Trover Saves The Universe review