Trover Saves the Universe Review

By Tom Marks

I have seen and done terrible things. I have pushed innocents off cliffs, slaughtered pets in front of their owners, and ground up more Power Babies than I can count – and I did it all without leaving my floating chair, laughing the whole time. Trover Saves the Universe did this to me. It’s an action-platformer from the mind and voice of Rick and Morty co-creator Justin Roiland, and while it technically isn’t connected to that show in any way, its humor is just as messed up and its gameplay is nearly as much fun as watching an episode unfold.

Primarily designed for VR (though playable without it as well), it puts you in the hovering shoes of a Chairopian, an alien race whose members never get out of a fancy, teleporting chair that’s controlled by a device that conveniently looks like a PS4 controller. Helping you on this profane trip is your partner, Trover – a purple monster with babies for eyes and a laser sword in his hand – who you use to run, jump, and fight through a short series of strange and often hilarious alien worlds.

The story set-up is simple: an evil alien named Glorkon has stolen your two dogs and, naturally, gained the unstoppable power of a god by placing them into his empty eye sockets… okay, maybe that’s not so simple. But basically it boils down to “stop bad guy, rescue dogs, save universe,” and the ridiculous dialogue throughout that journey frequently references the fact that this is all just a video game anyway in amusing ways – moments like Trover telling you to skip a complicated button puzzle entirely because “this isn’t that type of game.”

If you’ve seen either of the “Interdimensional Cable” episodes of Rick and Morty then you’ll generally know what to expect from the humor and writing in Trover Saves the Universe. Roiland’s unique brand of loose, improvisational jokes with intentionally sloppy delivery is just as strange, funny, and unpredictable here as it is on TV. Many of the voices are done by Roiland himself (you’ll recognize most of them, as Trover and Glorkon sound suspiciously close to Morty and Rick, respectively) and they have a casually delivered quality that is extremely welcome in the video game world where voice acting can too frequently feel stunted and stiff.

Trover Saves the Universe had me cracking up the entire time, and I’d often just stop and listen to the reams of extra dialogue characters would continue to ramble off long after I could have walked away. Sometimes I was laughing at the sheer absurdity, others thanks to genuinely well-crafted jokes, and frequently just from cheap but effective shock value. That last point is my biggest complaint with the writing (or lack thereof): Roiland’s comedy style is like drunken boxing in that its wild unpredictability is the key to making you laugh – but during the moments in which it gets a little too “drunk” and goes off the rails, it always falls back on pointless profanity without landing an effective hit.

To be clear, I don’t have a problem with the potty mouth (though there is a censored mode if you do) and a lot of the profane nonsense here adds to its hilarity. But stuff like a character randomly yelling “AIDS!” over and over when they were done with their clever quips was one of a handful of moments that felt more transparently like the voice actor just ran out of things to say rather than an actual joke that was supposed to make me laugh. Rough spots like this keep the story closer to Rick and Morty’s slightly less successful second Interdimensional Cable episode than any of the show’s more thoughtfully structured arcs: Still amusing overall, but not the best of what this madcap style can do.

Thankfully, Trover Saves the Universe doesn’t rely on making you laugh alone. Beneath the insane plot and ridiculous conversations is one of the better VR platformers I’ve played. It’s got a healthy mix of platforming, combat, and puzzle solving sections, none of which is overly complex but all of it is enjoyable the whole way through.

The VR mechanics are a clever combination of the third-person platforming you’d find in Astro Bot: Rescue Mission or Lucky’s Tale with the first-person teleportation movement of many VR shooters. You move and attack with Trover directly using the gamepad, but from the seated perspective of the Chairorpian who can only teleport between specific nodes that Trover runs to. It’s a system I haven’t really seen in another VR game but one I absolutely fell in love with here.

While Trover does most of the movement and combat, you unlock upgrades for your chair that let you pick up or throw objects and, most importantly, move up and down between three different height levels. Sitting ground level looking Trover eye-to-eye gives a more personal feel to conversations, but shooting up to the next level is a great way to seamlessly get a better view during fights. The levels are also designed to use this in interesting ways, sometimes putting Trover behind walls that you have to raise up to look over or using mushroom-topped trees to block your view if you go too high.

The combat itself is fun and satisfying, but fairly simplistic until the last third or so of the campaign. Trover pretty much starts with nothing but a basic attack and a jump, so you’re mostly just hopping around and hitting different flavors of Glorkon clone for the first half. Enemies slowly ramp up in complexity, but it isn’t until you start getting upgrades like a heavy hit, a dodge roll, and the ability for the Chairopian to throw objects at enemies that it really starts getting challenging and fun.

Fights later on can be a hectic dance as you have split your attention between controlling Trover and throwing objects that often need to first be teed up by a heavy attack before you can grab them. That’s when the simple battle mechanics actually start working together in compelling and interesting ways instead of just being a fun but easy distraction. Combat was always amusing, but these later fights made me wish the whole game had their creativity.

It took me around four or five hours to beat the campaign, which is shorter than I was hoping. Realistically, there are only about five major levels to play through, though you certainly visit more than that full of weird characters and goofy conversations. Everywhere Trover Saves the Universe sends you is lovely and diverse to look at, full of personality, and compelling to explore, so I just wanted more of it all.

Hidden throughout some of those worlds are dozens of Green Power Baby collectibles which are used to unlock health upgrades for Trover (and also get him super high, because of course they do). They are entirely optional but I loved scouring each level to find them all – driven by Trover promising a special prize at the end of the story if you do. Their hiding spots make great use of the chair height mechanic and teleport nodes too, with Power Babies hidden in corners you can only see from certain heights or viewing angles.