How to play
60 seconds. Get as many bags in as you can. It's dusk, "Für Elise" is drifting down the lane, and that means the garbage truck is here. Hop on your bike, chase it down and lob trash bags in an arc into the hopper at the back. Big bag or small, each one counts as one. Misses don't cost you points or time. You just get an earful.
The bike rides itself. You just throw. It pedals, follows the truck and drifts closer and falls back on its own. When someone crosses ahead, it usually eases off and lets them pass, steers around them if that won't work, and brakes and rings its bell as a last resort. It also sidesteps most potholes a little. The truck stops and starts at 11 to 18 km/h and gets faster as the round goes on.
You ride behind the hopper, sometimes a little left, sometimes dead center, sometimes a little right (right is most common, since traffic keeps right in Taiwan). The bike holds each spot for a while, then drifts slowly to the next, so it doesn't weave much. Even on the right you're only slightly off and still behind the hopper, so a straight flick up still goes in. When it moves aside for someone, adjust your aim. To throw to the curb, you don't need to ride over there. Just flick up-left or up-right: at about 45° you'll hit the parked scooters, and any flatter the bag flies past them into the arcade.
Flick up to throw. The faster your finger is moving right before you let go, the farther the bag flies. Max out your flick and that's as hard as you can throw this bag. Flick at an angle and it heads that way. Flick way off to the side (up-left or up-right) and it lands at the curb. The throw always goes up at 40°, so all you control is power and direction. Tap the screen (or the card at the bottom right) to send the bag in your hand to the back of the line, and the next one is ready in 0.4 seconds.
Judging distance: the number at the top is how many meters it is from your hand to the hopper, and the "Closer" or "Farther" tag next to it tells you whether you're catching up or the truck is pulling away. Bags cast a shadow on the road, and your last throw leaves a faint trail behind the truck, so you can tell if it fell short or flew long.
What counts: the whole bag has to go through the hopper opening, inside the frame. The tailgate is sloped, so the opening faces up and back and is almost as wide as the truck: clipping the bottom edge and bouncing in counts, and so does hitting the sloped plate above it and sliding in ("Snuck in!"). Falling short (hitting the food-waste bins on the back step counts as short), hitting the side frame, bouncing back off the sloped plate (that counts as hitting the frame too), landing on the roof, going wide and hitting someone don't count. Missed bags stay on the road, and riding over one gives you a jolt.
When time's up, the music stops and the truck drives off, but bags still in the air get to finish their flight. Then you get a pickup log: bags in, hit rate, longest throw, how many earfuls you got and your rank.
All you need is your finger. There's no tilting, so your phone won't ask for Motion & Orientation access.
On desktop: hold the mouse button, drag up and let go to throw. Drag up-left or up-right to throw to the curb.
The four bags
The bags come in the four sizes of Taipei's official trash bags: the bigger the bag, the heavier it is and the shorter your best throw. The other way around, a 5 L bag is light, so a hard flick often sails over the roof. A gentle push up is enough. A hard flick with a 14 L bag usually hits the sloped plate above the opening and slides into the hopper. A bag is a bag, and big ones aren't worth more. If the truck's too far, tap to switch to a smaller bag, or wait for the truck to stop, ride in close and throw the big one then.
- 5 L
- Weight
- 0.6 kg
- Top speed
- 11.2 m/s
- Max reach
- ~10.8 m
- Reload
- 0.45 s
- How often
- 3 in 10
- 14 L
- Weight
- 1.7 kg
- Top speed
- 8.8 m/s
- Max reach
- ~8.4 m
- Reload
- 0.60 s
- How often
- 4 in 10
- 25 L
- Weight
- 3.0 kg
- Top speed
- 7.4 m/s
- Max reach
- ~6.6 m
- Reload
- 0.75 s
- How often
- 2 in 10
- 33 L
- Weight
- 4.0 kg
- Top speed
- 6.7 m/s
- Max reach
- ~5.6 m
- Reload
- 0.90 s
- How often
- 1 in 10
"Max reach" is the distance from your hand to the hopper when you and the truck are going the same speed (15 km/h) and your aim is straight. Weights assume 0.12 kg of household trash per liter (most bags aren't full). Top speed comes from a measured formula for two-handed overhead throws (Marques 2010), cut to 87% since your other hand is on the handlebars.
Your throw carries the bike's speed. The bag's speed over the ground is your bike's speed plus the speed of your throw. Going faster than the truck ("Closer") makes throws easier. When it's pulling away, the same flick falls short, so put a little more into it.
The air doesn't ride along. Drag depends on how fast the bag moves over the ground, so the faster you ride and the lighter and puffier the bag, the more likely it falls short.
Throwing pushes back. A full-power throw with a 33 L bag slows your bike by almost 1 km/h and makes it wobble.
What's on the road
Every hazard is out in the open and plays by its own rules. Nothing pops out of nowhere just to punish you.
- The gap driftsThe distance your bike tries to keep drifts slowly between 3.6 and 6.4 m, one full cycle every 6 to 10 seconds, and the truck changes speed every 3 to 5 seconds. When you see "Closer," that's your moment.
- Three stopsAt around 13, 31 and 49 seconds, the truck slows down and stops for 4 to 5.5 seconds, and your bike rolls up to about 3 m away. That's when to throw the big bags. Two or three neighbors line up at the back with their trash, blocking the lower arcs.
- Sudden stopAfter 20 seconds, every speed change has a 35% chance of being a sudden stop (something's in the road), at most once a round.
- CompactingEvery 6 bags that go in (yours plus the neighbors'), the yellow light flashes and beeps for 1 second, then the packer blade comes down over the hopper opening, presses into the hopper twice and lifts back up after about 3 seconds. While it's down, anything you throw hits the blade and bounces back out, and the crew will shout "Compacting!"
- People crossingA grandma with her shopping cart (slow, wide), a schoolkid (fast, short), someone glued to their phone (stops halfway across) and a man walking his dog (man, dog and leash) step out from the covered sidewalk. Your bike usually slows down to let them pass, steers around them if it can't, and brakes and rings its bell as a last resort. A bag that hits someone doesn't count.
- Potholes and drainsRiding over one gives you a jolt and slows you down a little, and a throw at that moment goes off in both power and direction. Your bike sidesteps most of the potholes it sees early (if it spots one too late, it just rides over it), but usually rolls straight over drain covers. Your own missed bags stay on the road and jolt you the same way.
- Side throwsFlick up-left or up-right and the bag sails to the curb. At about 45° it hits the parked scooters; flick flatter (closer to sideways) and it flies over them into the arcade. Scooters are parked at a slant in long rows along the arcade. One on its kickstand often tips over when a big bag (25 L or 33 L) hits the upper part of its side, then falls onto the next one, domino style, sometimes taking the whole row with it. Some set off their alarm and flash their turn signals. A 14 L bag almost never knocks one over, and a 5 L bag can't budge them (at most it sets off an alarm). Scooters on their center stand, and rows parked facing the other way, won't go over. That bag counts as a miss. Those scooters belong to someone, so knocking them over earns nothing, no reward of any kind. The log just notes how many you toppled.
- Faster as you goFor the first 20 seconds the truck tops out at 15 km/h, then it can go up to 18 km/h. After you land 5 bags, its speed swings get bigger, and after 10 bags, more people cross the road. In the last 10 seconds, "Für Elise" speeds up.
The crew has opinions
Miss, and the two crew members on the back of the truck will let you hear about it: on the left, the chief, 20 years on the job; on the right, the rookie. Keep missing and they get more and more worked up: the 1st miss gets a tip about what went wrong, the 2nd gets impatient, the 3rd is a meltdown, and from the 4th on they just shake their heads in silence. Land a bag and it all resets.
Their comments don't cost you points or time. The speech bubble pops up over whoever's talking and stays out of your finger's way.
- Heads-up1st miss in a rowChiefGet closer, then throw!RookieIt goes in here! Right here!ChiefThe roof? You want me to climb up there?
- Impatient2nd miss in a rowChiefTaking out the trash, or doing the shot put?RookieAre you practicing free throws?
- Meltdown3rd miss in a rowChiefTwenty years on the job. Never seen an arc like that…RookiePlease, let me clock out on time!
- Praise3, 6, 9… in a rowChiefRight in! Keep 'em coming!RookieWow, impressive!
- Close callEvery timeChiefHey, hey! Hand it over, don't throw it!RookiePlease don't hit me!
- Hit a passerbyWhoever got hit says itGrandmaWatch it, youngster!KidOwww! …Just kidding!UncleHey now, you'll spook the dog!
- Scooter downRight as one fallsChiefAw man, the scooter's down!RookieThe scooter! Sorry, sorry!
- DominoWhen the 3rd one fallsChiefIt's a scooter domino!RookieThey're all going down…!
The voices are always in Japanese (every language plays the same recordings), while the speech bubbles follow your language. With sound off, you still get the bubbles.
Nearly hit a crew member and they just dodge and grumble. That bag doesn't count, and there's no reward of any kind. The crew only reminds, calls stops and grumbles. No swearing, no insults.
Ranks
Your rank depends on how many bags you land in one round, one rank every five bags. The cutoffs are still a draft, and we'll adjust them after playtesting on phones.
Why it's built this way
The numbers in the game are as real as we could make them. Where we found a source, it's listed. Where we couldn't, it's an estimate.
- Why chase?Taiwan has 4,021 garbage collection routes, and only 810 of them use fixed times and fixed spots. The rest collect along the way: the truck stops for just 2 to 3 minutes at each spot, sometimes less than 1, and "people often chase the garbage truck on scooters or run after it carrying their trash."Source: PTS 2025-02-21; TVBS 2024-05-13
- "Für Elise"Beethoven wrote it in 1810, and the composer died more than 50 years ago, so it's in the public domain. Existing recordings have their own rights, though, so the music box version in the game is our own arrangement. As for why garbage trucks play it, the stories (imported from Japan, imported from Germany, picked by an official) contradict each other, and nobody knows for sure.Source: Copyright Act (Taiwan), Article 30
- A truck built to specThe solid yellow body, a hopper whose bottom edge is 0.9 to 1.3 m off the ground (1.05 m in the game) and at least 1.6 m wide (2 m in the game, with only a narrow frame on each side), and a 3-second warning before compacting all follow the government purchasing spec. The tailgate is sloped like the rear loaders common in Taiwan, so the opening faces up and back. The crew stand at the corners of the back step, no more than 45 cm off the ground, next to bins marked "raw" and "cooked" food waste. The truck belongs to Happy Lane Sanitation, a made-up crew, and no real city is named.Source: Joint supply contract spec for sealed compactor garbage trucks; Taiwan EPA draft
- Truck speedA Taiwan EPA draft rule says that "with crew riding on the back, the truck is limited to 15 km/h within 500 m between two collection points." The first 20 seconds stick to that limit, then it opens up to 18 km/h to pick up the pace.Source: Taiwan EPA draft; PTS 2022-08-11
- How fast is full powerOn phones, people's fastest swipes average about 25 to 28 cm per second (a 2016 study, figures cited secondhand). We figured a hard flick is a bit more than twice that, so a hard flick is full power and a gentle swipe up is about half. Power comes from the fastest moment in roughly the last 0.1 seconds before you let go, because fingers usually slow down right before they lift, and the very last moment reads too slow. Phones don't report your finger while it holds still, so the clock starts when your finger starts moving, and the time you held still isn't averaged in. Flick speed is measured from touch event timestamps, not how far your finger moves each frame, so phones with high refresh rates don't get a max-distance throw on every flick.Source: Bevan & Stanton Fraser 2016 (cited in AHFE 2024); Android ViewConfiguration
- PacingBorrowed from Left 4 Dead's "build up, peak, fade, relax": 12 to 15 seconds of chasing, then a few seconds of a stopped truck for easy throws, three times over. And when the crew has nagged enough, they go quiet, an idea borrowed from Getting Over It.
- The crew nags, never yellsIn the news, it's mostly people yelling at sanitation workers or throwing things at them. In Nanzi, Kaohsiung, someone threw a bag of trash at a truck before it had stopped, injured the worker on the back and got 15 days' detention for negligent injury. Workers usually just remind people, turn a bag away or call a stop, so the crew in this game are long-suffering comic relief: hit one and they just dodge and grumble. No injuries are ever shown.Source: NOWnews; United Daily News