Gas Station Simulator Review
Have you ever wanted to quit your job and open your own little business, in the middle of nowhere away from the busy city life? Then this game is perfect for you tohelp live out your fantasy, by running a gas station called The Dust Bowl on sunny route 66. The aim of the game is simple; you’ve got to run the gas station all while doing renovations, upgrades and expanded it, to make it a profitable 5-star business. Slight spoilers ahead (well, as spoilery as you can get for a simulation game), so drive on carefully and make sure you have enough snacks for the ride.
When you first start the game, the station is in disrepair and needs a good cleaning.Once you’ve got it into a more decent looking state, you will get a phone call off your shady uncle, who will tell you how to run the business, unlock new objectives and goals and give you an idea how to play the game. The first things you can do in the gas station is serve customers and fuel up cars, which will help you earn money, so you can buy more fuel and items to sell. As you progress through the game, you will be able to buy additional items to sell and build new areas of the gas station, which include the garage where you can fix cars and the car wash, as well as additional items to sell. Eventually, you will also be able to hire staff to help take the load off you (cos believe me, trying to run a business on your own is hard work) which means you have more time to help organise your business and keep on top of stock and as the business grows further, you will get to a point where you can leave the station in the capable hands of your staff members and all you need to worry about is managing stock.
There are special events that occur in the game to keep you on your toes such as Jimmy (an annoying kid who will vandalise the station), sandstorms (makes the station messy) and my personal favourite, the alien party bus stopping by, where aliens (and occasional dinosaurs) will stop off at the station and basically buy all your stock, leaving you with a massive profit, but needing to do a massive delivery order as well. There are other cosmetic features in the game, such as giving everyone Santa hats, should you play it near Christmas time, or having the ghost of a rock and roll singer casually flying around the station.
I really enjoyed this game, as it was a nice easy game to just chill and relax to, while I watched something else on my other monitor. There are some events and featured I turned off, such as Jimmy and the sandstorms, as I found these ruined my experience personally by adding extra stress to my gaming, but obviously everyone is different and people might like the extra bit to do. I also found the ending to the game was a bit abrupt, as basically you owe your uncle $5000 and once you paid him off, that is technically the end of the game, however you haven’t got everything unlocked at that point, as for example the car wash isn’t max level as it costs $12000 to upgrade it, so I would have preferred if you could max everything out before finishing the game, but that is my only complaint.
As of writing this, I haven’t played any of the DLC’s however, I will return to the game once I have bought the additional DLC’s, as I can only imagine they had more fun and extra things to do in the game. Currently, there are 3 DLC’s for the game including Can Touch This, Airstrip and Party Time and there are 3 more DLC’s expected to be released this year, with Tidal Wave planned for the 21/03/2024, Car Junkyard planned for the 2nd quarter of 2024 and Shady Deals DLC planned for the 3rd quarter of 2024, all of which I am looking forward to.
Overall. I would recommend the base game as it is, as it is a nice game to just relax and take your mind off things while enjoy having your own business, without having to worry about running one IRL.
