About Bubble Gum Simulator:
It’s Day 60 in my main save game and I can say I have thoroughly enjoyed every minute of what Gas Station Simulator gave me so far, but I do feel like it has come to an end, for now. This game is currently outselling Deathloop, which definitely surprised me, especially as a huge fan of both Dishonored and Dishonored 2… but I get it. There’s something oddly satisfying about completing small tasks for an instant reward. The fact that until you’ve maxed everything out, there is always something to do. The party bus showed up and the bins are full, my only employee just ran out of energy and fuel is running low too. It’s not incredibly challenging, but very rewarding when you are running around putting out these small fires and emergencies. I love the random “celebrity lookalikes” that wander in, Elon Musk telling me my Gas Station smells awful and then throwing a tantrum because I accidentally yeeted a free pair of sunglasses into his shopping basket. While this could easily be frustrating, to me it is overpowered by the humour and comedy. Someone pulls up at this random gas station on route 66 and is throwing a hissy fit because there’s no puppy dog plushies in stock. Did you come all the way out here for that? – If you’re a little imaginative, and you only need to be a little bit, the lives these customers live and down-right comical. The mini-games, fixing cars, scanning goods, fuelling cars, are fun despite being repetitive, and by the time you’re a little bored of those tasks, you’ll have employees / meth addicts to do it for you. Sure, there’s a bunch of bugs like customers getting stuck because they can’t figure out how to circumnavigate a small plant (like a really small one because of this amazing bug which personally I think is working as intended that grows in reverse)… or when your employee fuelling cars just gets stuck half way through fuelling, can’t be told to take a break and you can’t fuel the car in their place… these things are okay, because again with a small amount of imagination, you can put it down the the incompetence or laziness of the worker. Sure, to not get put off by some of the bugs, you need to be flexible yourself. Fortunately, if you’re not, the developers have put in some fantastic stress relief features like gosh darn yeeting a car to Planet X with your broomstick. There’s nothing more satisfying than having a fully stocked shop, fuel tank, workshop and warehouse… but that’s when things kinda come to a halt. This is where I thought, alright, the only thing that is left is to get the rest of the achievements. Unfortunately, that’s one area, and pretty much the only area where I did feel let down. If you’re not too much of a completionist, you probably don’t care too much… but my OCD is flipping out. Here’s a list of achievements which I’ve had trouble unlocking: The first tip Got a tip during a minigame. Growing importance Fueled 10 cars. Skills to Pay the Bills Fueled 50 cars. Thief! Broke into a car trunk. On the Map Unlocked Popularity Mining Shaft! Completed RC Race on the Mining Shaft Track Jack of all Trades Employee reached level 10 in all skills and the Hidden Achievement of getting a time under 1:02:00 on the RC track. (I have a time of 00:58.02) For the rest, I feel like there’s a few quality of life additions that could be made (of course more content too but I know the devs are focusing on fixing bugs, but just what I feel would be great to see): Adding 1 item (or a custom amount) to shelves, especially for smaller shelves like hats, newspapers and glasses. Selecting fuel delivery by price instead of litres. More importance to painting, I do it for myself, but it doesn’t seem to have any impact on anything in the game. Upgrades to Rudy, it’s painfully slow. Shelf stacking as an employee skill? Being able to close individual areas of the station, i.e. the workshop Stats, perhaps things like how much you’ve sold of x/y good, how much money you’ve made all-time, how many footsteps you’ve swept. Would be a nice bonus!
