Title: One Man’s Trash
Developer: Jony Pazu Games
Publisher: Jony Pazu Games
Release Date: July 23rd, 2025
Platforms: PC via Steam
Price: $6.85 (USD)

Intro

One Man’s Trash is a short experience that wears its inspiration on its sleeve, but that is hardly a negative.

The gameplay loop revolves around sucking up dirt and garbage, selling it for cash, and using it to improve your vacuum to suck dirt better and collect more garbage. All in pursuit of a missing hard-drive containing millions of dollars of bitcoin. The gameplay loop is not terribly inventive, but it is a satisfyingly enjoyable romp, and One Man’s Trash certainly has a few surprises in store for you across the handful of hours it’ll take you to reach the bottom of the junkyard. If you come in with set expectations, you’ll have a lovely time with One Man’s Trash. 

Review

You are the newly minted owner of a junkyard. Congratulations! Except, you don’t really have much interest in entering the junk business, you bought this junkyard with purpose. You aren’t here to add more junk to the yard, on the contrary, you are here to remove it. Legend says that somewhere in this massive pile of junk, is a small hard drive. Inside that drive lays millions of dollars worth of bitcoin, and you have bought this junkyard to dig down and find it.

This is done not with a shovel, but with your handy dandy junk-sucking vacuum. The nozzle will suck up dirt, and reveal bits of junk. These range from small items like traffic cones, to larger things like bicycles, and eventually entire rusted vehicles will reveal themselves. These bits of trash can be collected and sold online, via the website “Junkbay,” for cold hard cash. This cash can be spent to improve your vacuum, allowing you to delve back into the junkyard more efficient than ever. All in pursuit of this supposed hard drive containing the key to your leisurely retirement. 

The game is an homage on two levels. First, the gameplay is very clearly based upon the recent hit indie title A Game About Digging a Hole. Swap out the vacuum for a shovel, and the games are extremely similar. Secondly, the plot of One Man’s Trash, about the search for hidden bitcoin in a junkyard, is based on a real story. Not to say that imitation is anything but flattery here, One Man’s Trash does an admirable job of paying homage to both the game and story that directly inspired it. 

The gameplay loop is satisfying, and there is a bit of chunk to the progression system, with a number of different options, and a decent range to spend money on. There is of course the vacuum itself, for which the strength of suction can be improved, as well as the size of the area being affected, the range of the suction, and the capacity of the vacuum to store dirt without needing to empty out. Players can also upgrade themselves directly, via an increase in the number of junk items they can carry before needing to return to the surface. Three items can also be purchased to make the dive easier. A scanner to detect nearby junk, lamps to illuminate the area, and a rope to allow for descent as your junkyard-delving goes deeper and deeper.

I never found myself using the scanner since there is no shortage of immediately visible junk to collect, but the lamps and rope become a necessity. As you sink deeper into the earth, the similarities to A Game About Digging a Hole become more obvious as your junkyard starts to give way to treacherous, cavernous earth, full of abandoned mines and certain denizens who are keen to make you leave. Things get stranger and stranger the deeper you go, in your quest to find the hard drive.

Final Score

I reiterate that One Man’s Trash is not really breaking any new ground, but it is a very good time. It took me around 5 hours to beat, and I thoroughly enjoyed the loop of digging ever deeper in search of the next nugget of trash. While the journey to the bottom never had any reveals that caused me to drop my jaw, there are plenty of fun surprises in wait, including a particularly special one when you finally find the fabled hard drive.

If you have a free afternoon and you want to do some digging, One Man’s Trash is a wonderful way to occupy your time. 

Featured Image: Jony Pazu Games

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