Supermarket Chaos

If you haven't played Librarian: Tidy up the Arcane Library, go play that. If you have, go play it again. You'll have more fun. This one isn't fun and relaxing. It's just... organizing with very little feeling of satisfaction. This feels like the developers are sadists only pretending to want to make a game that people enjoy. The things that irked me: 1. Concept It's a grocery store, so there are "KEEP REFRIGERATED" and FROZEN FOODS included in the mess of things the robot threw all about early that morning, HOURS before your character shows up to pick everything up. Rather than throw it away, you're rewarded for putting the now DEFINITELY SPOILED product BACK ON THE SHELF to be sold. 2. Tedious Reorganization and Number Inflation a. Many of the item quantities exceed a single shelf slot (528 facings, but only about 350 different items in the regular level; and the smaller level is literally a double facing on all but 7 products (which instead have more facings)), and the game doesn't give any warning as to which ones and how many more slots are necessary, so if you want the same product to be next to each other and not scattered about in several different facings (not necessary for game completion), you'll wind up doing a LOT of rearranging as you find more items. This leads to a lack of satisfaction early on upon getting all of a certain item, as it likely means there's more of it and it's going to need another facing.... b. Additionally, some items only fit one or two on the shelf, while others fit more than you can ever hold in your hand at a time, making rearranging awkward for things you've already filled a shelf with, but also... if I never see another shampoo bottle again.... I think they were 4 deep, 4 wide, and double faced... 11 types (3 shape variants with the only other difference being color).... so like... 352 of the 4,668 products were shampoo/bodywash bottles.... 3. Finished Look Isn't Visually Appealing The types of items in each section (17 total sections) often don't lend themselves to a nice, organized finish anyways. For example: There is an alcohol/drinks section that is two, slightly separated, 4x4 shelving units. It would make sense to put 16 alcoholic beverages on the one and 16 non-alcoholic on the other, or at least make the quantities divisible by 4. Instead, there are only 10 non-alcoholic drinks. THREE are water, FOUR are bottled soda, and THREE are the six-pack can version of THREE out of the FOUR types of bottled soda.... Meanwhile, there's an alcoholic item that has three identical facings and another one with two.... 4. Glitch Early on, I was clicking quickly to put a bunch of the same items (shampoo) on the shelf and clicked one too many times. The incorrect item went flying into the shelf and, instead of just falling down or bouncing off, it stuck fast and became unattainable. When placing and removing items from the shelves, the game focuses on the shelf slot, not the item, and apparently that hit box is a cube including the air in between the shelves (so if you're at too much of an angle, it'll select the wrong one as well even if you're looking at the matching product). Since the shelf ATE the item, I couldn't get it back, despite looking directly at it, without going into the menu and clicking to shuffle ALL of the items what weren't currently shelved. It's happened on a few occasions since, but I was able to get just the right angle so that I could select a corner of the product that was sticking out and not need to jumble everything again. (Also, sometimes the game selects the shelf on the next aisle over, like I found the perfect gap between cubes, and tries to stock it there.) 5. Poor Art Despite graphics being set to high, the game looks like I'm playing it on a really low graphics setting. To add to that, in the 2nd, smaller level, the chip bags are FLAT. Like, someone crushed and murdered the contents of every single chip bag. The candy bags and frozen meat packs as well. Add to that like.... 320 magazines and just so many of the products in that level have no shape to them. 6. Gambling System In the main level, for each filled shelf, you get a star. There are three machines over by produce to spend the stars for a CHANCE at a random sticker buff. The stickers don't seem to repeat themselves, at least, but I prefer a guaranteed reward. The smaller level did it better: after a certain amount of filled shelves, they gave a choice of 3 random stickers to acquire. (Also, I didn't like the music and turned it off early on. Then I discovered there was a way to change the music, so I tried that, still didn't like it, and turned it back off.) "But you played 30+ hours, you must have..." I played it once without using any OP abilities (~11 hrs), then played the smaller level (don't remember time and the game seems to only record your 'best time' regardless of level), then played the large level again while using the auto grab abilities (~3 hrs). It mostly felt frustrating the entire time and I would have had more fun just replaying the Librarian game for the... 15th time? I lost count. Gave it another try, focusing on getting as many refrigerated and frozen items first to reduce the overall ick factor, again without abilities, and it was 'slightly' better, because I knew where I wanted to put everything and didn't have to rearrange anything, even if it didn't look perfect (~7 hrs). And now, I'm playing it one more time without the OP abilities just to see how long it would take if I didn't try to focus on any particular section. Because otherwise it will feel unfinished. I'll probably play the 9999+ level as well if that ever releases (I don't trust 'coming soon' labels), because again, it will feel unfinished otherwise. It's not a matter of saving your money. The game is cheap. It's a matter of saving your time. Feels like a waste rather than relaxing and meditative like the Librarian game.