need to know
what is that? gas station management game
Release date: November 14, 2022
Developer: monkey moon
the publisher: raw anger
Review date: Nvidia GeForce GTX-970, Intel i7-4790K, 16GB RAM
Multiplayer? No
Link: Official site (opens in new tab)
Many management games, whether as large as SimCity or as small as Two Point Hospital, operate on the premise that efficiency is the only thing holding back the capitalist system. often With proper management (that’s you) everything works perfectly. It’s a fascinating fantasy, but it ignores the contradictions inherent in the pursuit of profit. Flat Eye isn’t a particularly good management game, but it’s more interesting than many of its peers. It centralizes the tension between the desire for a perfect system and the conflicting needs of that system, creating more than the sum of its parts.
As a remote manager working for the renowned Flat Eye Corporation, you will oversee the operation of pit stops in Iceland. I’ll come to refuel or do some shopping. Like best/worst conglomerates, Flat Eye says he uses one business to underpin many others. They come for gas, they buy groceries. Maybe coffee. Sooner or later, this little depot will offer everything you can imagine, from instant groceries to medical consultations. Why settle for a corner of the market when you can have it all? , Amazon started out selling books, but grew to…well, everything. Companies have a bottomless appetite, and Flat Eye is always looking for expansion, new ways to reach customers, and new sectors of business.
nice land
Indeed, it’s a charming little place. The cold weather in Iceland makes the depot look like a cozy little haven. The lo-fi visual style presents an understated dystopia with bright colors and clean design. I enjoyed tinkering with the layout, from setting up little dividers between self-service checkouts to placing welcome cardboard cutouts next to self-help booths where personal data was collected. Even knowing that I was a company slacker like Weyland-Yutani and Walmart, I was happy to expand it.
Pit stops are handled by one clerk that you micro-manage, queuing tasks, keeping shelves stocked, and making sure every module in the shop is working. At first, this is an easy and frankly tedious task. But as the services offered by small pit stops expand, so much more needs to be considered. We need to create devices and services that complement each other while maintaining three primary resources: power, biomaterials, and data. For example, biomatter (waste) from smart toilets can be used and turned into food. What I am sure is not in the commercial. Both devices require power supplied by a geothermal generator (exclusive to Iceland), and smart toilets can also supply data to self-help booths. Different modules have different needs and need to be kept overlapping for the station to work.
It’s not particularly difficult, but when space and money become scarce, you have to prioritize. innovate? Are you focused on maximizing sales by getting as many people in your checkout as possible, or are you expanding your business by splitting your stores to generate revenue from dozens of different services?
Whichever you choose, it’s easy to see how skinny this one employee is. The self-service checkout breaks comically quickly, and most other devices perform poorly. Simpler games can compensate for this with clever placement. Flateye is not that game. Instead, no matter how malicious you are, it’s impossible to stop you from breaking things and making your customers happy.
Fatigue isn’t the only threat to employee health. they will get hurt. they may die. Repairs increase the risk of accidents, and the clerk suddenly meets an unfortunate end. As for the game system, it doesn’t really matter which one, you can hire someone instead. Business goes on. Humans are just the fuel of the corporate engine. There is nothing that companies cannot repackage to clean up their image, so the entire chain of events from death to employment is told through cute corporate pop-ups.
they will get hurt. they may die.
The visuals and design convey Flat Eye’s themes well, but the overt chunks of the story feel rather awkward. Throughout the game, Premiere’s customers (her bespoke NPCs that the clerk can talk to) enter the station. These encounters allow you to keep micromanaging your employees or let them choose what to say. also (slightly) bad consists of spewing out descriptions of the (modestly) declining state of 2022. The writing is a bit mediocre and none of the dialogue options are particularly exciting. In, while the disposable clerk serves the larger theme of the game, these narrative sequences have no anchor. – And none of your interactions really seem to shape the outcome.
These customers may be somewhat interesting, but by and large they are too thin to be attractive. Their appearance and interactions are largely related to the introduction of new services or items within the depot, and seem intended to provide additional context for each device. I am writing good information. An uneasy sense of what’s really going on is far more impactful than a disgruntled eco-artist coming in and saying ‘corporations are bad’. I don’t know if I get anything from that deal. It’s a shame, because a narrative segment to break up the monotony of management is a good idea.I’m disappointed in how boring these sequences are.
human error
In addition to these human NPCs, you’ll have to deal with an AI that secretly runs Flat Eye. This AI seeks to guide you towards a greater goal, including the future of humanity. Not malicious at all. The sequence where they talk to themselves about the presentation they use as a cover to talk to you was novel at first, but quickly became an obstacle to hitting the skip button and skipping.
There is also a messaging service within the manager desktop interface that allows you to talk to other people in your company. These chats are a little more interesting just because they have more issues. You can hurt or upset people, and your limited options for conversation make you seem oblivious, or worse, complicit in the exploitation of those around you, at best. When your co-workers tell you that they don’t understand how you got ahead of them so quickly, even though you’re new to the company, you assume it’s due to luck. No matter what you choose, you can’t really help this colleague’s situation. You benefit from power structures, but you have little power of your own. Yet these dialogues are not as impactful as the administrative portion of the game.
Flat eyes are definitely problematic in the long run. A quota is assigned each day to motivate you (or give you the opportunity to rebel). In addition to customer satisfaction and revenue, these quotas affect daily performance reviews. The better you do, the faster you can acquire new technologies and upgrade your station. Even when I was most focused, progress was very slow and new ideas weren’t introduced fast enough to stave off boredom. , Flat Eye forgets to emulate the depth of the management system in order to reveal the reality that is often shut out of these titles.
Flat Eye’s system works well for its narrative for a few hours, but boredom wins out in the end. The hectic work schedule made me feel like a clerk running a shoddy store, but having really done this kind of work, I wasn’t too excited to get back to all these simple jobs. Even pushing the theme, your depot is inevitably headed for disaster for ill-gotten gains, but Flateye goes beyond its initial effective commentary to present a compelling hook. It’s failing. It runs out of things to say long before the end of the story, and the player ends up with a fairly simple little management game that doesn’t have enough customization and customization to create something compelling on its own. I can’t mess with the system.
I totally agree with the narrative goals of Flat Eye and in many ways it succeeds. Unfortunately, these effective devices are marred by lackluster writing and interactions with NPCs, or the monotony of core his gameplay his loops. But for a good portion of its length, Flateye forced me to keep messing around with my little gas station. With more depth to its management system, Flateye could have overcome its narrative shortcomings. And a more engaging dialogue sequence could have made up for that basic structure.
That said, I liked the flateye. The potential is underutilized, but I still enjoyed making small pit stops in off-the-beaten-path places. is an entertaining, dark and entertaining corporate business simulator.The daily grind will inevitably let you down.
