Roadside Research

Roadside research I have to say, I really like this game. It has a classic simulator gameplay loop where you manage a gas station, except you're an alien. The concept is fun, the humor works well, and I genuinely enjoyed playing it. However, I have one major criticism that I really hope gets addressed in a future update. The early game is great because there is a nice variety of tasks. You ring up customers, refuel cars, clean the station, take photos of people, and do all kinds of different activities. It keeps the gameplay interesting. But the late game is a completely different story. The late game basically turns into this: order products for the shop, spend around ten minutes unloading the truck and stocking the shelves, and by the time you're finished, everything is almost empty again. So you place another order and spend another ten minutes unloading the truck. Repeat over and over. At that point, the game stops feeling like a gas station simulator and starts feeling like a truck unloading simulator. The constant unloading and endlessly restocking shelves and fuel becomes incredibly repetitive and honestly just isn't fun anymore. Please give us some late game upgrades through the research tree. For example, once there are no humans inside the shop, let us use alien teleportation technology to restock the shelves. It could be an expensive upgrade, and you could even make it upgradeable so the truck unloads itself very slowly into the storage room using teleportation. Then, inside the UFO, we could have a device that lets us teleport items from storage directly onto the shelves. If customers witness items magically teleporting onto the shelves, their suspicion level could increase. That would fit the game's theme perfectly while making the late game much less tedious. Another feature I'd love to see is an automated fuel system. Let us build a machine that can connect to fuel barrels and automatically refill the gas pumps. Each machine could hold four barrels, and players could build multiple machines if they want. I really enjoy this game, but the late game desperately needs more automation. Right now, constantly unloading trucks and manually refilling everything becomes so repetitive that it takes away the motivation to keep playing. This is especially true when playing solo. The game is definitely more enjoyable with friends, which makes the repetitive late game much easier to tolerate. Until this is addressed, I can't really recommend it. Edit: I somehow completely overlooked that the developers had already addressed this in the community posts, and they even took the time to reply to my review explaining what is coming in the next update. It sounds like they are already actively working on exactly the issues I mentioned, which is great to hear. I'm genuinely looking forward to the update and will definitely check it out. The fact that the developers respond to well structured community feedback and are willing to implement meaningful improvements shows that they really care about their players. Because of that, I'm changing my recommendation to a positive one. Developers who actively listen to their community and react to constructive reviews deserve the support.