Trash. It’s everywhere. Especially on the beach. Which one? Ha! It might actually be easier to point at one that’s clean. At least in Seashore Pick ‘Em Up!, although that is also where Udin, resident beach guard, has taken it upon himself to do what virtually every beachgoer in the game won’t: make sure trash goes into the bins, and the correct bins at that. A relatively simple task… at first.
I suppose we should be glad that these samey-looking male and female trash-tossers only leave banana peels, soda cans and water bottles behind. Stuff that’s easily sorted. Except, for some odd reason, it disappears after about five seconds! Which might sound fine. Trash has been removed, meaning Udin’s left with one less item to concern himself with, right?
Wrong, because every object that is not binned properly results in a loss of points! Three, to be exact, while successful disposal instead grants you five points. As far as I can tell, there’s nothing to the score-based star-rating at the end of each level aside from bragging rights. Keeping the beach clean should be enough of a reward anyway, so this is fine.
Besides, you can’t end a level with a sub-zero score, so what’s the problem? Yeah, about that. Each of the fifteen levels in Seashore Pick ‘Em Up! feature a two-minute time limit. Might sound like a lot, but it isn’t. See, unless you manage to gain enough points to fill the bar on the left side of the screen up to at least one star, you won’t unlock the next level. Simple as that.
Overall, it’s a deceptively simple experience, only truly marred ever so slightly by… well, jank. The hitboxes of the three bins felt absolutely off, costing me valuable time as I got stuck trying to move around them in a timely manner. What? Oh, three? Did I say three? Hmm… ah yes, I did, and that’ means ‘s because it’s recycling time!
Three types of garbage, three separate bins. Well, in the third and final world, anyway. Come to think of it, for a game like this, the difficulty curve is actually quite decent. Target Point, which is to say the three-star requirement, only goes up by a little with each consecutive level. Thankfully, the number of beachgoers increases accordingly (and where and what they toss is random).
But as noted earlier, trash does not simply stay on the ground forever, penalising you for dilly-dallying. So be quick or be dead. By which I mean, get a move on or you’ll likely be out of a job by the end of the day.
Seashore Pick ‘Em Up! is available on itch.io.
