Konbini Cleanup

Eh, this is more of a neutral review than a negative one, but even though I pushed through my perceived problems and 100%'ed this (and then went to sort the entire third map by hand anyway, by the way the entire third map is not needed for 100% achievements), I can't really in good conscience recommend this one. It's certainly serviceable as a regular sorting game, especially if you don't know Japanese and/or don't look too closely at things, but as someone who enjoys the eye candy of the things I'm sorting back into neat rows, and enjoys the Japanese culture and language, this game constantly left me with a jarring uneasiness, and the vibes were nowhere to be found here. If you try this, go in with the mindset of this is a somewhat janky generic store to restock, and maybe that would be fine. I listed a bunch of problems in https://steamcommunity.com/app/4951190/discussions/0/591814721688257785/ but basically there's lots of little bugs and mistakes that plague the game. Some of the more egregious issues: - Some items of the same type/category will spawn enough to take up two shelves instead of one, while most others in that category just take up one shelf, seemingly with no rhyme or reason at all. - The whole money/star system is completely broken in multiple ways, and can be farmed just by saving/loading game and moving stuff around (and you can't really avoid getting extra stars on accident). - Every price tag in the game is the same, from giant plushies to bottles of alcohol to manga books to chocolate bars to huge bottles of laundry detergent. Everything is 355 yen (380 after tax), which isn't even a valid tax calculation in Japan. And there is a price sign in dollars instead of yen in the second map too. - Several signs and textures are reversed front to back, both on the walls and on products, and many of the signs don't belong on the walls and shelves that they were put on, especially in the first and third store. - There's multiple things in the game that point to this being not just a "Japanese-adjacent" store but actually located in Japan itself, but a good number of the products, especially in the third map, have no business being in a Japanese store. Lots of stuff with packaging that's completely free of Japanese words, for example, which would be fine to an extent, but then many of them also have not only English but also German, French, and other European languages on them. Or references to things like "Aussie honey" and "Water from Rocky Moutains" (sic) And things like Nutri-Scores, which are found on European packaging only. - The autosort feature is kinda nice but the categories are sorted haphazardly with no way to change any of it, and the sorting within each category seems random too, so you'll be running around the stores sub-optimally anyway if the sort order is followed. And many other little things, some mentioned in my thread above, some covered by other people (like how some item categorizations don't make sense). It's not terrible, but I don't feel like enough love and care was put into the game, and that's a pity. Sure there's no "AI slop" images in here, but I actually feel like this specific game ended up worse for it, because in the pursuit of purity here, about half the item assets are decent ones and the other half are just random nonsense from asset packs that don't fit the setting, repetitive signs that make no sense, and generic price tags that look artificial, which defeats the point of the purity. I think this game would never have passed muster prior to the advent of AI and the blind rage that people have for it, that now makes them praise things just for not having AI, when the actual final product is still, to borrow the term, sloppy. And the dev is already well on their way to making a second cozy sorting game due out next month (release dates: Aug 14 for first game -> Oct 07 for second game) which makes it feel like they're doing asset flips to cash in on the genre and common tropes as quickly as possible while leaving fundamental bugs and mistakes in their wake. I'm sure that one will be better because it's not based on real life stuff, but this one left me sad.