Alien Market Simulator

Update: Looks like the dev added a hotfix for most of the issues. I verified that the ones that were addressed in the patch were indeed fixed, but another very frustrating bug was uncovered later that made me still not want to play it. I have reported this to the dev and he seems eager to address that one too. If anything, he seems devoted to the game. I want to like this game and would, if it wasnt so buggy. In its jankiness its charming, and Im not one to complain too much with small bugs but, the amount of them are kind of unbearable. I will name a few of them in hopes the dev(s) sees and addresses them. - Many times if you interact with bots, your camera will stop working and you have to esc to get it back - Cleaner bots will get stuck the terrain, even if you assigned them to clean something like a flat fenced parking lot - Trash will get thrown into the area outside of the store and even in the water (This may be a feature but if it is, its awful) - The stock worker gets stuck so often and just stops working. A reload will fix this, but theres only so many times I want to do that. I probably had to reload 4 times in 20 minutes. - If you move stock shelves with items on them, the boxes will come off and glitch out in the floor. You can pick them up but you can only restock once you pick them all up. - Might be a feature again, but when cleaning bathrooms, if youre in the stall, people will walk in and close you in with them (Some people may find this fun, I dont judge, but doesnt tickle my pink) There are also some quality of life features that would be amazing: - The ability to use empty boxes to take stock off of shelves - The ability to assign a bot to more than one station - Have an option to have a bot go back to their previous assignment after charging - Set a price based on percentage increase - When you have a game where theres little box thieving aliens, its probably best you dont have stock employees that put empty boxes back on already limited shelf space. Id be happier if they even just threw empty boxes on the ground outside of the stock room or the store. I am all too happy to play and change my review if most of these are addressed. Until then, a definite downvote, especially for 1.0

This should not have gone to a full release. There are still reported bugs from the early part of the Early Access. The AI for the NPCs are the most basic I've ever seen in a game. I thought this would have been a placeholder module. -The Stockers will pick the same place in storage and just throw there boxes on the ground when one beats the other there. These can be picked up by the little critter thieves. They will sometime just pick the same box back up. But make the full walk back. They also sometimes just get stuck and you have to reset them. -The Cleaning bots are worthless unless you use the "Clean area" option. The area they should clean via manual selection generally doesn't work. There are also Terrain they refuse to work on. Like the area between the main platform and the lower parking area. -The guard often gets stuck on the biomass mounds. You have to repeatedly reset him. -The Droids (skinny blue guys) get stuck at charging pads. You often have to reset them as well. There is absolutely no point to the floor panels having damage. It doesn't prevent the ships from landing, NPC walking across, you from building on them etc. They literally just happen for the little do this, this many times thing. That mechanic is really dumb as well. You end up having to buy a ton of lights because that's all that really counts for wall decor and there is a separate one for placing lights. So you just end up placing and deleting lights over and over. As those tasks just repeat and most of them are those things. Leads into decorating. You can't seem to place items back in inventory. So you end up needing to delete a ton of things to get them out of the world. But each one turns into garbage that can only be carried one at a time. So if you are remodeling a hotel room. You have to walk each trash piece one by one down the elevators. The hotel rooms allow you to rent them without having all the needed items. This lets NPC enter the room. But then they just get stuck there. Killing the hotel room. There are no trach cans at the hotel The cleaning bot should be able to clean the rooms. The area "Reception" you can have them clean is useless as vie never seen trash dropped there. There is an area that says "Location for sale" or something like that (used to say under construction or something). Doesn't appear to be anywhere for sale. Remember this is full release. Also doesn't say coming soon. Which it shouldn't. This is a full release. There is like 2 minutes of story in this game. It progresses very oddly. Like the NPC just kind of follows you around a couple times. The communication part of this is just dumb. Like you just keep clicking the NPC over and over to get him through his schtick. Which is really just a foreshadowing and a return mini tutorial for the hotel. That explains absolutely nothing. There is also a remanent of another sorta story line. Where an alien extorts money from you. This never really starts nor resolves anymore. You can turn it off in options. But just left over from a earlier early access thing.. At least the weird tower is gone that you used to have to climb to pay this guy.. for reasons.. I guess. The guards also ignore this guy. You now have a light saber. That also appears to be useless against the "mob" i guess guy. The shelve prices only visually work on some shelves. There is also a surprisingly limited number of shop items. They game is called "Market" simulator. yet the "Market" side is just the most basic thing in the game. There is just sooo much wrong with the game (Which would be fine in a beginning early access game). Should not be full release. at least it has a lower price point. It's all just grinding unlocks. The game is just dead and boring. No life to it at all. The NPC movements, the limited AI pathing, npc canned communication (which is just the normal.. this is too much or should have had this). That's basically it. They don't linger, interact with the decor at all except for the seats at the food stalls, They don't interact with each other. They just path through world items and each other. This is long. I wouldn't waste your time on this. The game looks and plays more like a school project than a simulation game.

I have put a fair few hours into this game. Although to be fair, one of the achievements is basically five hours of grinding the same thing over and over again, so that definitely helped pad the playtime a bit. The game is in Early Access and it absolutely feels like it. There are bugs here and there, but the developer has at least added ways to deal with them. You can reset positions, pick objects back up, and force your hired workers to follow you when they get stuck. What’s here is actually pretty enjoyable, which is why I want more from it. After a while though the gameplay loop starts to feel a bit empty. You eventually hit a point where everything feels the same and it doesn’t really feel like you are progressing anymore. I’d love to see more progression based achievements instead of ones that are lazy and repetitive, especially the 1000 alien bugs achievement. It would also be nice if they tied into in game achievements that actually reward you for completing them. There’s definitely potential here and I’m interested to see where the game goes during Early Access. 7/10

This is one of the better job sim games that have come out recently. The mundanity of doing job sim type tasks (like cleaning, stocking shelves, etc.) has to be offset with something interesting to make it worthwhile, and I think Alien Market Simulator nails that aspect. The aliens are suitably weird looking. The products you sell are confounding or gross (like "Mork's Pickled Thoughts" and "Morpho Tentacle"). The pests are nasty little alien critters that you have to smash with a hammer. The feeling of being a human being on an alien planet running the equivalent of a remote gas station/convenience store is on point, and that's enough to make it stand way out from the rest of the half-effort job sims that have flooded Steam. The game is well-paced too. Tasks are fun to complete, and once you get a feel for one of them you get something new to sell, or a new operation to run (like the gas station). Then when things start to become overwhelming, you get help to manage some aspects, and you move on to a higher level of coordination and logistics planning as opposed to menial work. The developers are very consistent with communication about their plans for the game so far, and after the 1.0 launch patches have been coming out regularly to fix or improve different aspects of the game. I'm very excited to see what's in store for this one, and it's shaping up to be a refreshing glass of water in the dry, dry desert of boring job sim games that are so prevalent now.

I have enjoyed this game so far it has been pretty fun! I have a few suggestions that would make the game better if the developers could make it happen =] 1] Add trash cans to market so we can add them where they are needed. [Especially hotel rooms when cleaning] 2] Add waitress bots to collect money on tables and deliver food 3] Fuel station is only using 2/6 robots. 4] Add more fuel tanks to fuel station 5] Add a system to where we can see how much stock of a product we have in storage 6] Increase the re-stocker speeds or allow me to hire more. I am running out of product faster than they restock 7] Allow cleaning robots to pick up trash bags 8] Currently cannot purchase last 2 food stall upgrades [bugged] 9] Allow us to still make orders when an order is shipping 10] Allow cleaning robots to roam and clean instead of being stuck in one area at a time 11] Re-stockers keep grabbing boxes with items already stocked, wasting time while other products are empty Thank you for the cool game and I hope it gets even better! Congrats on full release!

Spent 10 minutes trying to scan groceries, half the time you can't pick up or scan the items. I can't even save during the "prologue" either to pause my progress while I wait for them to fix this softlock. Virtually unplayable.

So many bugs and spelling errors. I cannot figure out how they decided this was ready to come out of early access. I want to enjoy it, but there are so many problems with this game.

Its an amazing game. But Please fix the restocker so they dont fill empty shells with nothing attached to it.

Ein schönes Spiel was sich gut entwickelt. Mal was anderes.

How many times do I need to click a box of goods to be able to scan and put it in the bag? Answer. Too many. One click should be enough.