Trash Talk Review – A Tactile Trip To The Junk Drawer

Disclaimer: Trash Talk was provided for free by VR Distribution, although the writing and opinions of this article are my own.

Have you ever looked inside your trash can and wondered if you could make a board game from what you found? Like, how could you use cracked eggshells and off-smelling milk cartons to have fun?

No?

Well, that’s what the designers of Trash Talk have done. Everyday items are turned into components for this family-friendly cooperative board game about a trash panda trying to talk to a group of opossums.

Just imagine the movie Arrival, only hairier, smellier, and covered in trash.

How to play

Starting a game of Trash Talk requires one player to be a raccoon. No, that’s not an invitation to hide in my attic and raid my garbage bins at night. It is an invitation to grab a privacy screen and several pieces of trash from the game box.

All the trash comes in pairs and includes a finger puppet, a cocktail umbrella, a slinky, a pull-back car, and an assortment of other small items taken from a nearby lost and found.

The other players form Team Opossum. They take a copy of the same trash the raccoon took and lay out an equal number of word cards.

For the first round, you start with three word cards and three pieces of trash.

Now, behind the screen, the raccoon lines up each of their items with a word card. Once they’re done, it’s the opossums’ turn to do the same.

The words on the cards generally have no relationship to the items on hand. So you will find words like “order”, “cloud”, and “ZigZag,” and then have to match them up with a blue rock, a penny, and a paperclip in the shape of a diamond.

It’s a challenging task. But once the opossums are ready, the raccoon lifts their privacy screen to see where both teams placed their items.

The round is won if the opossums placed their trash on the same words as the racoon.

On the other hand, if the opossums didn’t get it quite right. You remove all the successful items, replace the word cards, and try again.

Another failed attempt during this second round means you lose the game.

Hopefully, it doesn’t come to that, and you complete the round successfully. In this case, you start a new round by adding a new card and item of trash and go again.

Continue until all ten items have been used. Win that final round and you’ve mastered the art of Trash Talking.

However, you can expand your game of Trash Talk by adding items from around your house.

Got two tennis balls? Add them for your next challenge.

Two plastic sporks? Same deal.

Two cars? That’s a bit ridiculous… but it could work.

Reminds me of a Boxing Day brunch

There was that meme a while ago about Phil Collins going too hard on the Tarzan soundtrack. That’s how I feel about the artists on Trash Talk.

It’s a simple game without too much artwork. However, what art is there channels Eddie and Crash from the Ice Age franchise. The box cover and privacy screens exude energy, innocence, and mischief. Along with plenty of nods to pop culture references, it sets the tone for a good time.

This continues in the rulebook, with one of the coolest quick-start guides I’ve seen. The whole game is laid out in a comic strip on the back cover, telling you everything you need to know to play.

As for the game itself, I loved using the items as components.

It felt nostalgic, as they’re the same items you find in Christmas crackers. Nice memories of Boxing Day brunches washed over me every time I played.

Additionally, these toys are extremely tactile. So there’s an element of physical play as you handle them or pass them around the table. Because honestly, who can resist the allure of the pull-back car?

However, for an association-type game – a genre I typically love – Trash Talk didn’t do enough for me.

Of the many similar games I’ve played, Trash Talk is one of the most difficult to connect items with words. Often, both the raccoon and opossums are guessing where to put what. Because try as they might, there’s no logical connection to be found.

While frustrating, this lack of logical connection makes the game shorter. Association-type games thrive on communication between the team members trying to guess the answer. Their back-and-forth arguments are where most of the fun is had.

But since any logic behind item placement is tenuous at best, it’s hard to argue with whatever gets suggested. So instead of a lively debate, our opossum team accepted either the first or second response without disagreement.

You spend more time replacing cards than playing

While I often criticise games for being too long and tedious, I rarely criticise a game for being too short. Yet, Trash Talk moves too fast for its own good.

Mysterium Park shares similar gameplay, but starts you with a lineup of nine suspect cards. You usually spend a few turns trying to guess the right suspect. However, every wrong guess eliminates a card and moves you closer to being right.

By contrast in Trash Talk, a wrong answer means you replace all the remaining word cards. So while there may be fewer items to guess, there’s no added information to help you learn or get it right.

Additionally, regardless of the outcome, you’re swapping in and out word cards. This, combined with the short rounds, gives you the feeling that you’re spending more time replacing cards than playing the game.

Now, I’m sure if you pulled out a stopwatch and measured us to the second that wouldn’t be true.

But it sure feels that way.

Ultimately, this is my biggest gripe with the game and while I had genuine moments of fun. Overall, Trash Talk left me disappointed. It’s a shame because I normally love games like this and the components and artwork of Trash Talk are sublime.

Regardless, newer board gamers will still have fun with this title. However, if you’ve played the likes Dixit or Mysterium you’ll probably end up disappointed.