TROLEU was provided by Critical Reflex for review. Thank you!
When I was at Gamescom last month, I had the pleasure of meeting with some of my good friends. As we were talking, they casually brought up a couple of games they were looking forward to, and one was described as Papers, Please-esque. Then I saw the game, and it was as they said, with way more kicking, dancing, and ridiculousness mixed in. That’s how I was introduced to TROLEU. Ultimately, it’s a simple game, with a simple goal, and it has so much hilarity thrown in that I couldn’t stop playing, even when it was 4 am and I desperately needed sleep. I just had to finish one more route.
TROLEU’s goal is simple. You are a bus conductor, taking money, checking passes, and handing out tickets to passengers on your bus. Some passengers will have cash, and you need to give them the correct change, while others have a card that you have to swipe. And in Papers, Please fashion, some will have a bus pass that you need to check and make sure their picture matches, and it isn’t expired. At the end of our route, we need to have made a specific amount of money to succeed in completing the route effectively.
That’s the gist of it on the surface, but there’s more to keep in mind. TROLEU pushes the limits with new rules, mandatory stops, and consistent hazards that create this chaotic symphony that makes the experience feel unique. It becomes a game all about managing time, helping passengers while also cleaning up spills to keep them from slipping. Some get on holding items that can fall if they do, which can cause even more chaos, so it is very much in your best interest to keep everything tidy.
I like the combination of gameplay mechanics where we need to keep the bus tidy and move around like a normal first-person game, but as soon as we talk to customers, we get to move our hands individually to grab the specific items and tickets we need to. It does make helping them harder, but I like how much it adds to the chaos.
TROLEU also has a satisfaction bar that can go up and down depending on how your legal passengers are treated. The lower it is, the happier they are. Treating them well will lead to a shady person with a roguelike-esque shop to get on and offer us more tickets and upgrades to purchase. However, kicking them around, watching them slip, or forgetting to quiet loud passengers will bring the bar up and trigger an inspection. The inspector will come on and check every person there to make sure they are all legal passengers. If they are, he will leave in his own chaotic fashion by flinging himself out of the bus. But if he finds an illegal passenger, he’s coming for you. Now, you can kick and throw other passengers at him when he’s coming at you to stop him, so if you feel confident, you can let him get angry.
Mixed with the variety of environmental hazards that come with each of the six levels and their harder, night shift counterparts, there’s a lot to love. I found myself going back in and playing more of the endless mode just for fun, and getting new unlocks to make my playthrough more enjoyable and exciting. Even though the number of levels is limited, the variety and feel between them, with different passengers, hazards, and environments, keep it fresh.
Now, I love the general gameplay; it’s fun, energetic, and chaotic in all the right ways. However, there are times it just gets way too chaotic, and can quickly lead to feeling very overwhelmed. All it can take is one mess up where a beach ball swings into everyone, knocking them down, while 5 new passengers come on board to feel completely overwhelmed. It got to the point where, as soon as this started to happen, I pretty much knew it was over and restarted the run to save me the frustration of bodies flying all around and the inspector kicking me off. Yes, we can throw bodies to stop the inspector when he’s coming after us, but my kicks sometimes completely missed, and I’d end up getting thrown out, or as I was frantically trying to help passengers who hadn’t been helped yet.
There are items we can buy that do help with that, like the ticket bomb, but that doesn't stop it from feeling a little overwhelming at times.
The fighting mechanics also feel a little off. They are using Guitar Hero-style prompts that need to be pressed at the right time. It’s a little unforgiving, and there wasn’t a lot of leeway if I was off timing by a little bit. It also wasted a lot of time, time I could have used to kick them off and start getting to other passengers. Ultimately, I found that just avoiding fights and kicking people off or paying them some money to pacify them worked better and saved me tons of time. For a game where we are frantically running around and trying to get everything done, locking us into a fight like this feels against what the core of TROLEU is all about.
For the most part, TROLEU is solid on the Steam Deck. It runs at 60 FPS nicely and won't dip downwards. However, it does tend to hit performance pretty hard when there are lots of people on the bus. I wouldn't expect a game that looks like this to hit 14W battery drain and over, but it does. It isn't unplayable by any means, and generally sticks below 15W the whole time, but I was still quite surprised. There really aren't any graphical settings to change, and we can reduce the framerate, but it's not as enjoyable.
While performance is solid, there is one big issue that stops me from wanting to play more on the Steam Deck. On the beach level, we are introduced to a new mechanic to check money using a magnifying glass to see if the banknotes are fake. The mechanic itself isn't that bad, but trying to play using the Steam Deck's gamepad just doesn't work. Every time I pick up the magnifying glass, it goes right into a corner that I can't get out of, stopping me from using it. It doesn't stop progression, but it is a nasty bug that means some people may give fake banknotes without me being able to tell. I was able to fix this by switching to the Keyboard and Mouse scheme, which could indicate this is a controller issue and not a Deck-specific issue.
Overall, it is playable, and the biggest issue will most likely be fixed in a patch post-launch, but it does stop my enjoyment a bit. I hope it gets fixed soon, because I genuinely feel like this is the perfect game to play on the go. There are some tutorials that seem to be missing their images or videos, but it's described well in the window, so it doesn't hurt the learning experience.
There are some options to change sensitivity for the camera and our hand, language, field of view, screenshake, and exit warnings, but that's about it.
The game does support 16:10 resolutions and has solid controller support, but no cloud saves. There are no HDR settings.
TROLEU is a comedic Papers, Please! that has the makings of being a must-have game. Balancing helping passengers with keeping the bus tidy to avoid the onslaught of chaos is enjoyable, and the little things like the people's designs, how they fling themselves out of the bus, and just the overall situation is hilarious. There are times when it can become too chaotic, and it does start to get overwhelming when mixing in the fighting mechanics, but it never completely frustrates.
It is playable on the Steam Deck, and I do find it enjoyable, but it drains more than I expected and has a key issue that makes checking banknotes impossible. It doesn't stop progression, but it can make it harder to get more money or a high score. And if that inspector comes in, it could be trouble. Still, it is playable, just needs a little love to get it into that essential status for portable play.
Our review is based on the PC version of this game.
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TROLEU is a great, comedic simulator that is held back by how frustrating the chaos can be, but still finds a way to be enjoyable. However, it has some issues on Steam Deck.
