When I was in my early teens, I foolishly left my school bag with all my homework on a public transport line. I immediately started panicking, thinking no teacher would ever believe I had done the homework, but left it on a public vehicle. It sounds like an excuse I googled on the internet, with other noteworthy classics like “the dog ate my homework”. As it had only been an hour since this careless mistake, I returned to the vehicle when it circled back in my area again and, fortunately, found the bag untouched. Now, you might be asking why I am mentioning this story? Well, because there is no way this would happen in Troleu, as nearly every other passenger is either trying to scam, steal, or start a fight with you.
Being a Trolleybus Conductor Is A Lively Business
Troleu has a fairly simple premise. You assume the role of a nameless trolleybus conductor, and your task is to issue tickets to customers and collect payment by accepting cash, card, or checking their annual bus passes. However, half of these customers are not law-abiding citizens and will attempt to score a free ride by handing over fake money or goods. It’s down to you to catch them out. But you can’t just politely ask someone to leave the trolleybus if you find them up to no good. That would be far too easy, wouldn’t it? The only way to get them to leave is by physically kicking them off the moving vehicle or throwing them out after you’ve beaten them up.
If you’re thinking to yourself, this sounds absolutely hilarious and unhinged, then you would be right. Some of the people you can end up fighting include old grandmas, young kids wearing bootleg TikTok tops, and even mothers holding a baby. Like, seriously, what makes you think you’re gonna win a fight when you’re carrying a baby in one hand? And all this happens pretty much in the first 10 minutes of playing the game. It feels morally dubious to fling young kids into traffic, but if I’m being paid by the hour, so be it.
Caught Red-Handed
Now it’s important to apprehend these hooligans because each time you complete a route, you will receive a grade on your performance. The overall grade will be determined by multiple factors, including failing to serve a ticket, kicking out the wrong people, or losing a fight. Not only that, but at certain times during the route, an overbearing inspector will come onto the vehicle, and if they find anyone without a ticket, they will attempt to throw you out, ending your run.
Fortunately, you can use the passengers on the trolleybus as glorified human shields and kick them in the direction of the inspector to knock him out. But because the vehicle itself is pretty small and cramped, it can be hard to avoid him with the best of intentions, so it really amps up the stress level of each run.
What can alleviate a bit of this pressure is buying items from the shopkeeper who pops onto the trolleybus every few stops. Some items are rather basic, such as purchasing additional tickets to distribute to customers. Other items will assist you during the route itself, like punching upgrades or sunglasses that allow you to see who has already been served from afar. Once you start a new run, you will lose all the items you have bought and will have to start anew.
The nuance to all this is that you have to perform all these actions within a short amount of time. It’s about learning what to do in every scenario and seamlessly executing it, while memorizing every person you have served so far on the trolleybus, so you optimize the run. It’s actually quite challenging to achieve a higher grade on some of these routes, and each one becomes progressively more difficult, with additional factors added on.
Some are simple, like a new rule might get announced where you will incur extra fines if people are carrying a beer or a guitar, whereas others will dramatically change how the bus looks, such as passengers spilling liquids on the floor, which will need to be cleaned up by a mop bought from the shopkeeper. It can all get pretty chaotic, as there are so many spinning plates to balance. And if you don’t address these issues, you’ve guessed it, your grade will be impacted.
A Ride You’ll Never Forget
But if you’re reading all this, thinking it can’t get any more bonkers, then you would be wrong. There are six routes in total, and some of the locations are what you would expect, such as the Suburbs or the Countryside, while others are totally out there, like the Stone Age and Outer Space, where, quite literally, aliens will want to ride your trolleybus. However, the commuters will also bring new dilemmas. My personal favourite is if someone is infected with flies and it’s not addressed long-term, a T. Rex will quite literally chase down the vehicle.
Each route also has a duplicate night version, where you must maintain the trolleybus electricity by paying a fee. Otherwise, fellow passengers can steal your money. You can only retrieve your money if you kick the customer. The problem is, the kicking mechanic is very unreliable. Because so many people are huddled together in the vehicle, it can be difficult to aim a kick in a particular direction, and more often than not, I inadvertently kick someone I wasn’t intending to. This is initially amusing, but when you’re trying to get those higher grades and you’re on a strict time constraint, it gets pretty annoying.
The entire gameplay format feels like a bizarre amalgamation between Papers Please and Night of the Consumers, as it turns a mundane job into an unpredictable pressure cooker, where the unexpected becomes the expected. This slapstick gameplay loop is pretty fun and hilarious to play out for about an hour or so. But then the humour starts to wane, and a lot of the game’s charm disappears with it. What also doesn’t help is that, depending on your skill level, you can easily complete this game within three to four hours, so there isn’t a long runtime here either.
The parallels to Night of the Consumers don’t end there, however, as they also share the same aesthetic vibe, as the character models have a low amount of polygons, which creates this jarring, caricatured look to them all. It’s terrifying to look at, but it adds this comedic undertone to everything that visually happens on the screen. I’m usually not a fan of this type of art direction, but in the case of Troleu, it absolutely works.
I feel pretty torn when it comes to Troleu. On the one hand, I found the first hour of the gameplay highly enjoyable, and it evoked some genuine laughs from me. But after that, I found it tedious to play through, and the jokes became repetitive. I think comedic and light-hearted games are something that is sorely needed in the gaming industry right now, but for me, it didn’t scratch that itch. I don’t think there’s enough of an addictive gameplay hook to keep you coming back time and time again.
Disclaimer: Critical Reflex provided a PC (Steam) copy of Troleu for review purposes.
