![]() Games developed knowing full well their customer base prefers to play stuff with cobbled-together physics engines and a lack of fail states so they can scratch Grand Theft Auto chaos itches and ramp a loaded bus off a bridge into a harbor. Games that oftentimes barely have timetables, let alone passengers that look like more than an hour was spent on their character models. Self-serious games like OMSI have been shuffled off search results by pick-me asset-flip shovelware games with some variation of “Bus Simulator” in the title. Games-with-the-word-simulator didn’t always have to be self-aware comedy games, but the precedent for wackiness was firmly set. Goofy ironic uses of the term simulator found viral success (e.g. Suddenly simulator games had to have first-person walkaround areas in which the player could dismount their vehicle or machinery. Search results for “bus simulator” on Steam, showcasing the majority of recent games have mixed-to-negative player reviews. The exquisite corpse of a decade of yearly updates that is Train Simulator holds no surprises in that department either. OMSI: The Bus Simulator (2013) does what it says on the tin. They’re tasked with doing repetitive, complicated tasks that only a huge nerd would know before the traditional long-ass tutorial. In the early 2010s job simulation games generally involved a vehicle in which the player controlled a camera glued to the driver’s seat. Chum for the hoards of Twitch variety streamers who need a steady stream of “hidden gem” to play until the honeymoon phase wears off. Thanks to a handful of companies (most of which are located in Poland, for some reason) games-with-the-word-simulator have evolved from tiny games for hyperfocused nerds to genericized shovelware. An unfortunate side effect of this is getting to watch a rapid mutation of the simulation genre into something damn near unrecognizable outside of a few legacy series. Unsurprisingly, this has led me to sample quite a few games with “Simulator” in the title over the last twenty years. Games that involve building up and improving on an existing framework are my kryptonite. Hi, I’m a writer with ADHD and various undiagnosed neurodivergencies that would make you wholly unsurprised to learn I never grew out of childhood hyperfixations (trains, dinosaurs, Egyptology, etc.), I collected them. The oil “changing” minigame from Gas Station Simulator. To properly dissect Gas Station Sim, though, we have to establish some baseline understanding of the current state of the “ Simulator” genre. Welcome to a 4,300 word review of a $20 game you’ve barely hard of. ![]() In those opening hours it’s better than the rank-and-file barely-functioning “ Simulator” games, but what points it earns with moxie it loses to unpolished jankiness and an insidious dark secret. The first few hours are a wild ride that seems to buck the trend of the asset-flip homogenous “simulator” game genre, only to fall to pieces as its flashy mechanics degrade into annoyances to be automated or outright ignored. Twelve hours into DRAGO Entertainment’s newest release Gas Station Simulator I find myself at a crossroads.
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