Trover Saves the Universe

Trover Saves the Universe is the comedy adventure game from Squanch Games — the studio founded by Justin Roiland — and it commits fully to that pedigree. The setup is that your dogs have been kidnapped by a beaked maniac named Glorkon, who has stuffed them into his eye holes and is using their life essence to destroy the universe. To stop him, you're paired with Trover, a small purple creature who isn't enthusiastic about being your partner and is even less enthusiastic about doing any actual work.

You control Trover's movement directly, but his mouth is entirely his own — and he has opinions about everything, constantly. The gameplay sits in adventure territory with light combat, light platforming, light puzzle-solving, and a string of morally questionable choices the game encourages you to make for its own amusement. Travel takes you across a series of weird alien planets populated by characters whose personalities range from mildly off-putting to actively dangerous.

A progression system lets you upgrade both Trover and yourself with new abilities as the campaign unfolds, but the real draw is the writing — improvised, unhinged, and committed to extracting laughs from situations that, on paper, shouldn't work. The game plays on a TV, a monitor or in VR with identical content, and the Steam release includes JOPO Mode (an alternate way to play) and the Important Cosmic Jobs DLC, which sends Trover back to his workplace for additional comedy sketches.