Excessive Trim | PS5 Review

Panda Indie Studio, the developer known best for their retro inspired shmups, returns to the scene with an isometric roguelike that is truly out of this world. Featuring a pot smoking alien in a flying SAW-cer "Excessive Trim" has you harvesting weed and other psychedelic drugs as you mow over cattle, angry farmers, and tractors. It is this HIGH score fiasco that has the player seeking that sweet leaderboard fix as they progress level by level upgrading their lethal spacecraft for the platinum prize.

Complete with alternate color palettes named after old PC graphics engines, and various marijuana based themes "Excessive Trim" has you flying ever forward as an alien that is operating under the influence. As you literally saw your way through fields of crops, famers, tractors, cattle, and plenty of obstacles you'll be collecting weed as the scoring gimmick alongside pills, and health refills. All in an attempt to progress as far along as you can on a level by level basis. With intermittent stops at the Weird Shop vendor for random upgrades that build upon health, and various parts of the saw-cer performance. Allowing for the increasing of ship size, damage output, and control performance, among other things. 

The Verdict ...

As simple as it sounds, and as simple as it is this inter-STELLAR experience offers long term fun for all those HIGH score seeking UFO fanatics. The alternate color palettes in the game add variety, and the random nature of the roguelike mechanics keeps things fresh. Visually it's retro by design giving you health updates doom style with a weed smoking animated avatar of the alien behind the culling that looks worse for the wear with each collision. Adding flair to a visually pleasing isometric environment littered with moving parts, stationary hazards, and targets that sometimes scream in agony as they're mowed to death. All in all it's a budget priced game that's worthy of a buy day one. It has an easy platinum to earn as well simply for the grind.