Leave no raccoon behind in Dumpster Gang

A captured friend gives Dumpster Gang's raccoons another job. Alongside stealing junk and hauling heavy loot, the gang can rescue teammates from an Exterminator who wants everyone behind bars. That's a lovely complication for a game about tiny criminals: the creature who helped carry something away can become the reason to go back.

Coyote House Games' sandbox reaches PC on 3 December, and its free Steam demo is available now. The October demo announcement opens a suburban home, a rural farm and forest training grounds to solo players or groups of up to four online. There's plenty of room for a straightforward nuisance: eat rubbish, wreck a garden, take a chicken. The more interesting invitation is to make that nuisance a shared undertaking, with somebody hunting the perpetrators.

A job for several pairs of paws

Heavy loot gives cooperation a physical purpose. Players work together to carry it, solve puzzles and free captured friends. Those are three different reasons to pay attention to the other raccoons. A companion can help shift an object, help get through a problem or need help themselves. The group has work to do together even before anybody decides to be funny.

The small scale helps the premise. These are raccoons climbing walls and squeezing through vents in human spaces. A house becomes a place to infiltrate through routes suited to a much smaller body, while ordinary possessions become things to grab, throw or break. The controls include sprinting and climbing, and the game's description extends that invitation to nearly everything you find. A burglary has a lot of loose parts.

There's a pleasing mismatch between the animal and the task. The suburban demo lets you make coffee as well as eat trash; the farm offers cow-milking and chicken kidnapping. Making a drink belongs to an orderly human morning. Giving the job to a nocturnal gang with a talent for wrecking things makes it wonderfully inappropriate. The comedy starts with what these creatures are allowed to do.

Those specific errands give the sandbox somewhere to begin. A kitchen has a purpose beyond serving as a room full of throwable props, and the farm has creatures to interfere with. You can understand the task, then approach it with the movement and object handling available to a raccoon. The combination gives a group something concrete to attempt while leaving plenty of things within reach.

The Exterminator changes the errand

Cause enough chaos and the Exterminator comes hunting. His traps and the possibility of capture put pressure on the same activities that make the game appealing. Smashing and stealing are part of the invitation; getting away from the person who objects is part of the work. That makes the human an especially suitable nuisance in return. He's pursuing the very behaviour the gang came to enjoy.

Rescuing another player is the strongest part of that setup. It makes a friend's predicament something the remaining gang can act on. Carrying loot asks the group to help with an object; freeing a raccoon asks it to help with a person. Both fit the same small criminal enterprise, but the second has an immediate, recognisable appeal: somebody you brought along needs getting out.

That gives the co-op premise a useful second direction. Getting into human territory supplies one goal, and dealing with capture supplies another. An expedition can involve taking things away and bringing a teammate back. The official description puts rescue alongside evading traps and escaping capture, so the gang's relationship with the Exterminator reaches beyond simply spotting an enemy and running past him.

Four players is the maximum, and solo play is supported too. For a group looking for a different kind of shared adventure, GamerGuru's Shrek 2 Remastered preview explains its local, online and mixed co-op. Dumpster Gang's appeal is more closely tied to handling a troublesome situation together: move the awkward loot, make a mess, help the raccoon who's in trouble.

Something to bring home

The hideout gives successful stealing a destination. After missions, you return home to customise your raccoon, unlock hats with unique abilities and decorate with stolen objects. Human junk becomes something the gang can live amongst. It's an amusing reward for all that trespassing: a possession taken out of somebody else's orderly world gets a place in yours.

Hats with unique abilities also give customisation a practical role. A wearable reward has a use alongside changing the raccoon's appearance. Individual hat powers haven't been detailed. The combination is appealing, though: furnishing the hideout and dressing the gang both belong to the time between raids, with the wardrobe offering abilities to take back outside.

There is a gentler version of that attraction in Young Suns' repaired finds and travelling home. Here, the pleasure of bringing something back sits beside the risk of leaving somebody behind. That's the detail worth watching in Dumpster Gang's December arrival. A gang of thieves is funny company; giving those thieves reasons to carry, solve and rescue together makes their little crimes an appealing group project.