A quirky take on maze games within a first person perspective, NIGHT OF THE CONSUMERS iterates on this simple concept in an entertaining fashion. The task is simple; stock the shelves before the store closes for the night. The issue arises within the need to provide quality customer service to store patrons. Not to mention, completing an aisle requires you to perform a shelve-stocking minigame, a task that is interruptible by anyone who might catch you in their line of sight. Customers can be staved off by smacking them with boxes, or can be avoided by hiding in employee rooms, and you'll need to take advantage of these tactics to finish your shift.

This isn't exactly a horror game, but it is incredibly thrilling. The tense sound design, mixed with the grotesque representation of a grocery store had me jumping as customers rounded a corner, catching me off guard as I readied to finish the last few aisles. I spent a good two hours before I finally won a round; it feels like a near-impossible task at first, but the key is familiarizing yourself with the store layout, and knowing what aisles to finish first. I've personally worked retail before, and though it's an exaggeration of reality, it is generally spot-on. So props to the devs for parodying that vibe in a really interesting way.

I did end up having some issues. The low resolution output, done for aesthetic purposes, hinders gameplay initially, as you cannot pinpoint aisles from a distance by name. They read as a cluster of pixels, until you get close enough. There's also an issue with an NPC who, one-third of the day in, demands that you not only find her child, but bring them back to the exact spot that she found you. I could not for the life of me complete this on any of my playthroughs. It almost feels like its designed to be a run killer. There is not enough time to complete the task, and the sound design for locating the baby is honestly unreliable. I feel like there's a balance to be found with unique scenarios like this, meant to mix it up a little, but the devs didn't really find it here.

All in all, NIGHT OF THE CONSUMERS is a unique little gem from 2020 that I'm happy I visited. Its social commentary is brief, but entertaining, and the arcade-style gameplay is engaging. I definitely hope this concept is refined and expanded upon, someday. It's not perfect, but there is definitely something special here.

An amusing concept for a game with some decent humor in it and a good aesthetic. This is unfortunately marred by its poor design; I could put up with the lack of i-frames after satiating a customer (true to life) and the questionable mechanic of hiding in employee rooms (the customers run way too fast for this tactic to be of much use, and going into them wastes time anyway), but I put the game down after I lost due to a customer request that I literally could not complete because the timer was shorter than the time it took to traverse the optimal route to my destination.

That said, I think the pitch and what already exists of the game has plenty of potential, and I'd be interested in a more fleshed-out realization of the game. It needs polish more than anything else.