Trash Day Game Guide: Essential Co-Op Tips and Physics Tricks for Your Raccoon Squad

Let me set the scene. The folks at Off by One Games, a studio founded by ex-Rocket League developers, looked at the world of high-speed vehicular soccer and said, ‘What if we made it about trash?’ And somehow it works. Trash Day puts you and up to five friends in the paws of a neighborhood raccoon crew. Your job is to knock over bins, raid yards, dodge angry humans, and stuff a stolen shopping cart or wagon with as much junk as it can carry, all to haul it back to Raccoon Paradise.

Everything runs on real-time physics and ragdoll chaos. One bad turn and your hard-earned loot rolls down a hill. One human sprints into view and half your squad ends up face-first in a hedge. It’s glorious, and it will test your friendships.

After going through demo footage, forum threads and community chatter, I pulled together everything that actually keeps a run alive. Here’s the playbook.

Trash Day Nintendo Switch Release Date Everything We Know So Far About the Raccoon Co-op Sensation

The Wagon Is Your Baby (and Your Biggest Enemy)

Forget everything you know about video game vehicles. The wagon in Trash Day is a rigid body with real weight, momentum and friction, and it will punish you for ignoring any of those.

If the wagon leans to one side, your load is uneven. Stop and fix it before you try to steer, because a tilted cart is a flipped cart waiting to happen. Have someone on the squad keep an eye on the weight balance while everyone else is busy looting.

Packing 101: Heavy Stuff Goes on the Bottom

Garbage isn’t just garbage here. You’ll find featherweight soda cans and plastic bags, but also car batteries, old appliances, heavy metal pipes and wooden crates. Treat the wagon like a game of Tetris where gravity is out to get you.

The Golden Rules of Packing

• Big and heavy first. Old TVs, metal pipes and batteries go on the floor of the wagon as your anchor.
• Medium junk next. Fill the middle layer once the base is solid.
• Small trash last. Cram loose bits into the gaps.
• No towers. A tall, top-heavy stack acts like a lever, and the first curb or pebble will send the whole top layer across the street.

Spilled loot means wasted time, and wasted time means humans notice you. Pack smart once and you won’t be rebuilding the pile every thirty seconds.

Six Raccoons, Zero Organization? Bad Idea

I know the temptation. Everyone crowds around the wagon, everyone pushes, everyone blocks everyone’s view. It’s a fast track to collisions and a complete loss of awareness. If you’re running with a full six-player squad, split up the jobs.

• Steering Crew (1-2 players): Stay at the front handle. You guide the cart and call out obstacles.
• Pushers (2 players): Latch onto the back or sides. You’re the engine for steep hills, mud and thick grass.
• Scouts and Foragers (everyone else): Run ahead, tip over bins before the cart arrives, spot cars and humans, and find the high-value piles.

Nobody has to be a dictator about it, but a loose plan beats six raccoons yelling ‘LEFT! NO, MY LEFT!’ at once.

Look Up: Verticality Is Your Secret Weapon

Raccoons climb, and the maps are built to reward it. You can scurry up fences, scale drainpipes, hit rooftops and balance along power lines. New players stick to roads and sidewalks, which are exactly where humans and cars patrol hardest.

Try this instead: send a Forager onto a suburban rooftop, grab the good stuff and toss it down to the wagon crew waiting in the street. You skip the long winding route entirely. Climbing is also your emergency exit. If a human is chasing you, jump up a tree or onto a tall brick wall. It breaks their line of sight and resets their aggression, so you can breathe and plan your next move.

Whenever the ground route looks slow, look up.

Downhill Runs Will Humble You

If I had to name the number one run-killer in the demo, it’s the downhill slope. A loaded wagon picking up speed is an unstoppable freight train. If the steerers can’t keep pace, the cart runs them over, everybody ragdolls, and the whole thing ends up in a ditch.

How to Survive a Slope

1. Reposition before the hill. Front players shift to the sides or take a braking stance.
2. Rear players hold the back bumper and pull against the momentum.
3. If it’s still getting away from you, stop fighting it head-on. Steer the front wheels into something soft, like thick grass, a bush or a civilian fence. These absorb the impact and bleed off speed without launching your haul across the neighborhood.

Plan the hill before you reach it. Once the cart is already rolling, you’re mostly along for the ride.

Humans, Cars and Other Things That Hate Raccoons

The neighborhood does not want you here. Humans will chase you if they catch you stealing or wrecking their lawns, and cars on the main streets are an instant knockout. You get a long respawn animation while your wagon sits unprotected in the road.

Beating Humans With Brains Instead of Speed

• Use a distraction. One scout deliberately pulls a human’s attention and runs them in circles around a backyard pool while the rest of the team calmly loads the dumpster.
• Use the terrain. Grass and bushes slow humans far more than they slow an unburdened raccoon.
• Zigzag through gardens. Tight turns shake off pursuers.
• Check the street. Wait for a clear gap before crossing. Dragging a heavy wagon across a busy multi-lane road without looking is the fastest way to lose an entire round’s progress.

Totems, Patty Cake and Why Goofing Off Actually Helps

Trash Day isn’t all grind. You can play Patty Cake with teammates or stack up into a full raccoon totem. It looks hilarious, but it also works: a totem lets your squad reach spots no single player can, like open second-story windows or high tree branches holding rare loot.

The emotes help the team in other ways too. If the physics are getting out of hand and everyone is tangled up, take a quick five-second pause at a safe spot and line your characters up. It can reset your movement hitboxes and stop glitchy collisions from snowballing. Sometimes a breather is the best tactic you have.

Crash Recovery: Don’t Panic-Loot

Crashes are guaranteed. A curb at high speed, a stray explosion, and suddenly your wagon is upside down. What separates rookies from pro raccoons is the response.

The Recovery Routine

1. Flip the cart first. Don’t grab random trash. Get at least three players on the sides and flip it back onto its wheels together.
2. Post two guards around the perimeter.
3. Form an assembly line. Stand in a chain from the scattered pile to the wagon and toss items paw to paw.

The chain is much faster than every raccoon individually picking up an item, walking it over, dropping it and walking back. It also keeps everyone in one tight spot while two players watch for humans.

Final Verdict

Trash Day nails a rare balance: tight physics coordination wrapped in pure comedy. Everything comes down to communication, respecting weight limits, and using that raccoon agility to play the map vertically. Assign roles, pack with a plan, manage your downhill speed, and use distractions on humans, and your squad will haul piles of junk the neighborhood has never seen.

Grab your crew, practice your wagon steering, and get ready to live your best raccoon life when the full game launches.