Winding from Chicago to Los Angeles, the perfect place for your gas station is on the mother road of western expansion amid the late-mid 20th Century. I’ve waxed poetic about the roads that sing with music across the US in my American Truck Sim review, so I won’t bore you with that again. Instead, I’ll talk about when I took up the position of being one of those characters in a gas station on the Main Street of America. Another worldly snapshot of eclectic small-town Americana as run by someone overworked, underpaid, and loves every second of their interactions with travelers of the most beautiful road, Route 66.

On the surface, Gas Station Simulator is another one of those simulators that cover what is supposed to be a mundane job: Bus Simulator, Construction Simulator, PowerWash Simulator, Euro Truck Simulator, and so on. Though looking a little deeper than the quickly thrown-together cut scenes to set up your new business, Gas Station Simulator has a story, a point, and most importantly, a really difficult gameplay loop early on. Starting out pumping gas at a couple of bucks a liter, you’ll make a steady little profit out of your overgrown dust-blasted shack of a station. Then soon enough, you’re running around at a pace that would be called frantic if you were going slow enough to be seen by the human eye.

You’ll be Fueling cars, painting walls, sweeping the floors, stocking the shelves, ordering more stock and “gas” (even though it is a liquid), chasing away that menace called Dennis, emptying the bins, picking the turd up off the bathroom floor, ordering a bin lorry to empty your skips, and much more. Oh, and you’ll be ringing up the items people buy in the store believing you’re Sam Walton. Starting out from 5 AM to 8 PM before opening 24-7, my little slice of hell was open to everyone who needed their tires changed or bottles and cans of soda or snacks. Even if they needed fuel, I’d do it for them single-handedly.

Gas Station Simulator is one of those moments where lightning strikes, creating an experience that stands out amid the noise of new releases. I keep repeating myself regularly now but so many big releases are about fighters and so on, with weapons and violence everywhere. While I like that, at times I need to be sitting at the counter of a gas station on Route 66 at 3 AM enjoying the peace and quiet. That’s before a bus-load of aliens and dinosaurs in neon green suits have a rave in the middle of aisle 3, nearly wiping me out of tobacco, alcohol, snacks, and reading material that is as stiff as a board.

Despite the title, Gas Station Simulator is inherently poking fun at other stiffer-lipped simulators out there. This is no more evident than the phallic duck graffiti I had to paint over at one point or that very real alien-dino rave that happened. Honestly, officer, I didn’t take illicit substances. Joking aside, it is part of the story being told that you are in over your head, and these instances of whacky random internet-style humor are just the levity in a darker tale. Working for your mob-boss uncle, you’ll end up robbing people left, right, and center for the cartoonish patriarch.

It isn’t until quite late on in the admittedly succinct story that you’re able to hire staff and you’re no longer being run off your feet. While I do understand and enjoy the story that is being told of your near inability to keep up with the demand, it can be overstimulating to some. Showing off Gas Station Simulator to my dad, someone who is inherently going to be a bit older and thus might not enjoy that excessive activity, he wanted to get into it but knew too well from the pace I was being run around that he couldn’t enjoy it himself. While there are a few options to limit that stimulation, until you find a rhythm that works for you it isn’t very accessible.

That in my view is the biggest shame of Gas Station Simulator, especially as I’ve enjoyed blasting through the 10-ish hour (17 if you potter about) campaign listening to music and podcasts. As I said in the PowerWash Simulator review, a good game to drone out the world with podcasts, audiobooks, or music is like gold. Once you find that rhythm to combat Dennis and Gnasher that’s what Gas Station Simulator is. Sure, like all simulators there are physics bugs that caused things like bin bags to launch me into space, and a few times I’ve punted a car into an awkward spot or two, but it was nothing that wasn’t easily fixed by actual aliens.

Once you’ve fully upgraded the store to its max size, the side by the road is no longer the proper floor and the electricity pole now sits in the middle of a tarmac road. I’ve had an instance or two where I also had the entire store go extremely dark, not due to the sandstorms but simply out of the blue for a moment or two like a typical graphical glitch seen elsewhere. The biggest issue I had was the trucks though, sometimes they would get stuck leaving the map. Once the fuel tanker was hit by a car leaving, but a majority of the time it was the fact they wouldn’t turn up at all.

For the three main purposes of delivery, there are trucks: Fuel, in-store supplies, and auto-shop supplies. What I found in my mad dash to stock shelves and generally keep on top of demand was that I couldn’t do that. Rushing through menus causes a bug where my money ($2K for 1,000L) would be taken but what I was paying for wouldn’t come. This often meant using one of the occasional autosaves, and as a result, there would be load times. These aren’t as bad as Construction Simulator‘s but are still egregious enough on the Xbox One to be an issue.

While there are issues with the console port of Drago Entertainment’s Gas Station Simulator, I do think there are features that would be missing otherwise. It isn’t often that you find a console game, especially one available on the 8th generation, that features a FOV slider and one that goes beyond 110 no less. I’m sure if I had to skate around with a very small field of view and found out that head bob was mandatory (it isn’t, thank Christ!) this review would have been about the copious piles of vomit I’d have created.

Ultimately, Gas Station Simulator, while a little overstimulating early on and typically simulator-buggy, is fun. I love the anarchic turned-up nose of its more puerile mindset towards the genre. It is a simulator that is simple with its ideas, yet still something more as its campaign (while pervasive throughout) doesn’t get in the way of what makes the genre great, freedom. Not everything is nailed, as I wish it were easier knowing what is or isn’t in stock. However, it is still fantastic and reminds me of those times being around small businesses and helping out. Oh, and did I mention my love of that Route 66 aesthetic?

An Xbox One review copy of Gas Station Simulator was provided by MD Games for the purposes of this review.

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Gas Station Simulator

$14.99

8

Score

8.0/10

Pros

• That Route 66 aesthetic.
• Simple and effective gameplay loop.
• A FOV slider on a console game!
• A campaign that doesn't get in the way.

Cons

• Sometimes a little too stimulating to be accessible.
• Typically buggy for a simulator and in other ways.