Dawson Oaks Trailer Park Arvostelu (PC)

Dawson Oaks Trailer Park is like Among Us. Or at least, it would be, if those stubby-legged creatures in hazmat suits were intoxicated moonshine runners and  flint-hogging pyromaniacs. But, in a way, the same rule applies across the gameplay: a team of trailer park hooligans wreak havoc under the cover of darkness, a snitch actively blends in with them whilst reporting any suspicious behavior, and a supervisor patrols the park to banish non-law-abiding residents. There’s a lot of drug smuggling, microwave stealing, public urinating, and of course, enough moonshine to make the general public a little too enthusiastic about their nonconventional pastimes, like taking a bath in a stranger’s trailer, for example.

Picture this: you’ve been allocated a role in the trailer park—a task, if you will, that requires you to act like a homeless person for the duration of an afternoon. If you lean into your habits and passively urinate on the sidewalk, then you can keep your sanity intact and the supervisor as far away as possible. But, herein lies the problem: if you act on your strangest desires in range of the Snitch—a player who has the task of pretending to blend in whilst simultaneously reporting your actions to the local overhead—then everything you do will be sent back to the powers that be, thus putting your own job at risk. Who is the Snitch? How long can you fuel your bad habits before you get caught? Can you arrange a last-minute meeting with your fellow hooligans to banish the correct person?

The general purpose of Dawson Oaks is simple: either to keep your sanity in check by satisfying your wildest urges, or to blend in long enough to report back to the supervisor. If you receive the role of a Suspect, then you must tend to your habits as discretely as possible, whereas if you fill the shoes of a Snitch, then you must prowl the allotment, disguise yourself as a Suspect, and use small pockets of time to convey your research to a Supervisor, whose duty it is to catch Suspects and eliminate them from the board. The Suspects, too, are able to hold spontaneous meetings, at which point each player can decide whether or not to point fingers and banish the player who they believe is the Snitch. If they make an incorrect assessment, then a Suspect is wrongfully removed, and the game continues, only with odds that lean more towards the Snitch and the Supervisor.

With several roles to fill in Dawson Oaks Trailer Park and hundreds of shenanigans to formulate across a decently sized setting, the game itself gives you plenty to work with. Regardless of the role you receive, you always have something to do, even if it means brewing moonshine from your trailer, disturbing drugs to the other residents, setting things on fire, or sneaking into private property to take a bath. And, to be honest, that is but a small portion of what you can accomplish in the park. It’s all a little chaotic, but that’s sort of the point. You’re not tending to iffy components on an intergalactic vessel, but urinating on the floor and hoping that it won’t lead to drastic measures.

It goes without saying at this point, but Dawson Oaks Trailer Park is a totally absurd multiplayer game. It isn’t like your average social deduction sim, either. Oh, the idea is somewhat familiar, in that it revolves around two or three cliques, and that it requires each faction to play their respective parts whilst working to achieve an overarching objective. Only, there’s more of that highly illogical sandbox nonsense here that actively encourages each player to get a little creative with their work. For the most part, it is a lot of fun, too, to aimlessly roam a trailer park and to act of the most basic of primal instincts. Even if you’re a terrible liar, filling the role of Snitch has its perks, too. Simply reporting your findings to the police and witnessing a player’s untimely departure is a boon in itself, truly.

Combined with its doughy aesthetic and jam-packed world of interactive set pieces, characters, gestures, and roles, Dawson Oaks is a surprisingly creative and engaging social deduction game that happily blends into the ever-growing friendslop field. With friends, it’s an ideal place to cause a ruckus, as is it somewhere you can pair comedy with violence without feeling bad about the consequences. It isn’t a serious game by any means, nor is it a game that underwhelms you at any given moment. It’s evidently niche, but it’s also a fun and stupidly addictive experience that Among Us fans will love, for better or worse.

With active lobbies and a glitch-free system to keep its trailer park from falling to the tumbleweed, there’s a good chance that you will find enough here to keep you busy for a lot longer than the average social sim. Granted, it’s still an incredibly ridiculous game that, while still teeming with laughable content, might not appeal to those looking for a challenging experience that leans more towards the semi-serious murder mystery ball of thread. Will you ever get bored of waffling down questionable mushrooms and setting fire to random mail boxes? In time, perhaps. Either way, there’s a lot of fun to be had in a hooligan-fueled trailer park. Go figure.

Verdict

Dawson Oaks Trailer Park takes the basic idea of a social deduction game and pours a little moonshine down its gullet, all in an effort to bring a little more chaos and reckless energy to an otherwise perfectly “peaceful” society. With a good selection of roles to fill, a decently sized trailer park to transform into a festival of frantically planned events, and an addictive gameplay loop that allows players to act on their strangest desires, Striped Panda Studios distills a well-rounded, albeit niche experience that Among Us fans will most certainly get a kick out of for a few hours or more.