Gas Station Story

Slice-of-life adventure/VN made for the Game Boy with all the character portraits and some environment shots being done with the Game Boy Camera. Great atmosphere, music, and learning more about the plot and interacting with customers and your coworker is also a high point. Game breaking bugs seem to be preventing the completion of all but the most abrupt ending I could find, and the gameplay moments that are often closer in style to an Atari game and managing the cash register often did little that was interesting. Taking place in the far future, the game opens with setting details indicating that there is a lot going on in the galaxy, but little of that matters much to you as you are just someone working at a gas station with a coworker you are interested in. Your first day is a simple process of ringing up customers by choosing the correct gas pump if they are buying gas and creating the correct total for the food and drinks they have purchased. When your shift ends and you go to shut down the register, which is styled as a Game Boy of an abandoned model found years later and repurposed to act as a sales device, a message tells you that an update is available. Without any connection to the internet or anyway for an update to be available you accept anyway and in the coming days face the repercussions as the register not only alters how it works when checking people out but begins to force you to play through video game segments before allowing you to do anything, eventually even sucking your consciousness into the game. From speaking to your customers you learn that the update virus has become a much wider problem and is effecting more dangerous devices and robotic lifeforms as well. How willing is your character to endanger their life for their job and is it any more soul crushing than what their life had been so far? During conversations or your interactions with certain objects you can have choices that will influence the scene or future events. The characters tend to be entertaining enough but the Game Boy Camera's pictures acting as portraits for the wide variety of characters and as a setting introduction for certain areas makes the setting appear even more interesting and some of the characters you encounter all the more strange while still being able to handle displaying emotion well. All of the chiptune style music was fitting and nice to listen to. When you start to go through the video game segments at the register it opens with turn based battles that I was hoping would get more interesting but were just a few fights where you don't need to do much more than just hit the attack command. From there you go into somewhat Atari styled simpler room exploration where you have simple puzzles like block pushing to solve, these segments can have interesting moments like finding hidden areas or getting an alternate end to a boss fight and while the areas expand off of each other as you continue to be drawn into the segments nothing that mechanically interesting every happens in these moments. I would easily recommend giving it a look if the style interests you but it does get harder to do that when I reached the ending segments of the game and based on my choices I was able to get one very odd and abrupt ending that answers nothing and gives no real finale or I could attempt to go for two other routes that seemed to have my character get stuck in a textless dialogue scene I couldn't pass or get into a boss fight that randomly launches my character forward through the environment with no options to do anything. As there are no guides or let's play videos I can find on this game, I can't tell if this is problem for me or if I am mistaken and there is a way to reach these endings but since these evens are also directly proceeded by a section where just talking to your coworker makes your character invisible I assume there are just more problems near the end of the game. Hopefully they get fixed. (7-23 Issues I had seem to be listed as fixed, though I have not personally checked due to save incompatibility) Supported on Kickstarter and have a "Gas Station Owner" credit. Screenshots: https://bsky.app/profile/kennanw.bsky.social/post/3lt6riszu5c2b

This game has what feels like an infinite amount of replay ability. I love that you can play differently every time. There are so many secrets in this game, like the sweet kitty. The conversations in this game are so realistic and beautifully written. This game really encapsulates the feeling of the world falling apart around you while you still have to work, until, it ultimately affects your own day to day life. There is so much lore in this game and I’m left wondering about the universe. Where did the virus come from? How did it override all systems? Who made the virus? I WANT TO KNOW MORE. I’m left wondering about the people in game we don’t even know and what their lives are like in this futuristic world and how they are affected by the update virus. The graphics are adorable! I love the photos that were taken with the GameBoy Camera! Overall, VERY fun! I can see myself playing through this quite a few more times to get as many endings as I can. I would recommend 100%.

I had a remarkable time with my two playthroughs of the game. I had a couple small pain points with it and wish that the POS system functioned a bit differently, but I haven't played anything else quite like this. By far my favorite part was the customer interactions. With choosing more positive things the majority of the time and asking people about their lives, I ended up feeling a tremendous amount of comradery with many of the regulars. Like we were looking out for each other, at least in a small way, as the world around us went to ♥♥♥♥. Something beautiful and relatable in that.

This game is very fascinating with a story that kept me engaged, and not wanting to close the game until I got my first of apparently many endings. The actual business sim portion of this game is very unique, if a bit tedious. You definitely need to pay attention to what the customers want to get, and without giving too much away, you will need to think outside the box in order to figure out how to make transactions less tedious. I was drawn to this game by the Game Boy Camera aesthetics, and now I am staying to give the Clerk and Sam the best ending, no matter how many endings I have to go through. One issue I did have with this game, a trivial issue to some I admit, is that the game would not let me go to windowed mode even if the fullscreen option is unchecked. Glitch maybe? Otherwise, great game.

This is surprisingly good... Also obscure and underrated.

It’s a vibe.

Good Game

I backed this game on Kickstarter purely because I was very intruiged by the use of the Game Boy Camera, and I am very glad that I both backed it and played it. It's a very satirical, entertaining, and funny story of a dystopian world, where capitalism's chase of constant progress ultimately leads to things going very wrong...sound familiar?! As someone who worked for years in a supermarket, I can promise you that the mundanity of serving some customers checks out.

Really interesting art style and story. If you're into GBC aesthetic and small slice of life sci-fi stories, definitely pick this game up.

Hits very close to home (thanks for bringing back all my memories working retail XD). Most importantly, this game is a bite-sized way to not only relive the nostalgia Game Boy/Game Boy Camera era, but provides lots of space to think about the ways life does (and doesn't) go on amidst 'unprecedented times'. Gameplay can feel a bit tedious (particularly in terms of dealing with the point of sale system), but this feels intentionally done to help sink into what your character deals with on a daily basis and I feel it works in service of the overall experience (even if it's not always "fun"). One playthrough of the game lasts about 5 hours, so it's still a relatively short experience, easy to pick up and get through at least once -- and with multiple endings, it looks like if you'd like to explore different actions, potentially worth playing through again (and short enough you can quickly do so). I'm emotionally invested in the characters and am very curious about some of the responses I didn't take, and will be exploring the other endings!