Should you’ve ever dreamed about operating a grocery store checkout lane, boy have I received a sport for you!
There’s one thing interesting about working an unappealing job, simply in a online game. Proper after I received out of school I labored at an enormous field retailer for just a few months whereas on the lookout for a extra everlasting job, and it’s an expertise I don’t significantly wish to revisit in actual life. However in a online game? I might spend hours working probably the most menial job if it’s gamified. Working in a grocery store in actual life isn’t my concept of enjoyable, however such an expertise as represented in Discounty finally ends up being very enjoyable.
Discounty is a store administration sport the place you progress into city as an worker of the grocery store, now a franchise of a bigger chain. All through the sport you could run and handle the grocery store by stocking cabinets, promoting objects, shopping for new objects, and organizing all of this as you see match. As the sport progresses you start to unlock extra objects, increase the shop, and wish to search out methods to maintain the whole lot organized and operating. This consists of negotiating for brand spanking new objects and commerce offers with native retailers, who’ve objects you possibly can’t get whereas usually stocking the shop. When you run the shop every day, you additionally meet townspeople who’ve their very own quests to comply with because the city slowly begins to vary on account of the Discounty chain shifting into city.
The each day gameplay of Discounty is admittedly enjoyable and a deal with to play, with every enlargement to the shop feeling each rewarding and difficult as you must handle a number of points (stocking the shop, ensuring it’s clear, checking folks out) without delay. There’s additionally a good quantity of customization, as you possibly can transfer cabinets round, purchase new cabinets, and lay your grocery store out the way in which you need it. Whereas there aren’t gameplay advantages to creating your retailer significantly fairly and even to organizing your cupboard space, I discovered myself spending numerous time specializing in methods to make this the shop of my goals, even when there aren’t any rewards for having a visually attention-grabbing retailer.
The sport additionally seems and performs nice. The visuals and music are distinctive and charming, and I discovered the controls to be normally fairly intuitive. I had a little bit of frustration early on determining the money register (to press a button, you must maintain the management stick within the route of a button after which press A, which result in extra misclicks than I’d like) however for probably the most half it’s straightforward to grasp how you could do one thing. I did discover just a few glitches, together with one crash, however the sport ran very nicely for probably the most half.
The piece I really feel most torn about is the city and the story as a complete. A giant a part of the rationale I used to be excited to strive Discounty after seeing the trailer in a Healthful Direct was the potential social commentary, the place you characterize a big company shifting right into a small city, in search of infinite development. Whereas that’s there, Discounty simply doesn’t ever go fairly far sufficient. A part of that is perhaps the sport’s size – I used to be shocked when Discounty ended after three in-game chapters or about 40 in sport days. However I needed we’d get only a bit extra social commentary, and what we did get feels muddled. A part of that is perhaps the issue of taking part in as a online game protagonist, the place you’re fixing all of the city’s issues whereas additionally representing its ills. However I do assume the builders might have gone a bit deeper on this crumbling small city, the environmental impacts, and made the gameplay slot in with this. Maybe extra decisions could be good? I simply want the general idea would have been taken a bit additional.
By means of all that, I had additionally hoped there was a bit extra to do within the city itself. Every Sunday you will have a time off, which I normally ended up spending tying up unfastened ends if I had a quest obtainable. If not, it felt like a very long time to spend with out a lot to do. I usually ended up reorganizing the shop, however I feel if there could possibly be extra quests, extra methods to become involved within the city, that the weekly time off might really feel like a reward somewhat than a chore. Partway by you possibly can rent an worker, who at all times spends his days off on the retailer as a result of there’s no different enjoyable place to be. I discovered myself regarding that each one too nicely.
At its core, Discounty is a enjoyable expertise. The gameplay loop of operating a grocery store is satisfying, and I loved my time fairly a bit. My hesitation is that I feel it’s about midway there between being a enjoyable indie store sim and being an indie sport with a message, and I want they might have pushed their narrative only a bit additional to be extra memorable. Discounty remains to be value taking part in, however it makes me wish to see what the builders can do subsequent. Whereas the concepts and the gameplay are there, there’s some untapped potential as nicely.
