Time loops are just great. I mean, they’d be terrible if you were stuck in one, at the mercy of a day that just repeated over and over again until you snapped, but the concept also brought us Groundhog Day and Edge of Tomorrow. Swings and roundabouts!
In Garbage Day, which is knocking about on Steam Greenlight, you’re in a similar situation to Messrs Murray and Cruise. A single day, a small town, just like Groundhog Day, but with the guns and violence of Edge of Tomorrow.
Garbage Day is a sandbox where you can wake up, make breakfast, go to your job, and generally live out a dull life and then do it all over again the next day. It’s maybe a bit like your real life. Alternatively, you can grab a shotgun and kill everyone in town, go to bed, and then wake up the next morning and watch as all the folk you just murdered go about their very normal lives.
The trailer puts the violence front and centre, but the end of it and the description on the Greenlight page suggest that there’s a lot more to Garbage Day than murder.
“Your main goal is to find a way to break the time loop by exploring the world and to find out the secret behind all of this,” writes the developer. “If you die, you just wake up in your bed and the day starts again, so the world is your oyster.
“When you wake up you still know the information from the previous day and this influences the dialogue choices. Be a ruthless killer or become the friendliest neighbor to have ever walked the earth. Nothing matters when you’re stuck in the same day for eternity… But maybe there’s a way out.”
Cheers, RPS.