Manage your own discount supermarket! Get caught up in small-town drama, organize and plan your shop’s layout, and strike lucrative trade deals as you expand your secretive aunt’s business empire. Selling more frozen fries will surely heal this broken community… right?
Developed by: Crinkle Cut Games
Played on: Steam
Length: 20 hours
A review key was provided by PQube.
Discounty, to sum it up in the simplest way possible, is like Stardew Valley if you worked as the store manager at JojaMart. If you didn’t just gasp in understanding, allow me to explain. This narrative-driven store management simulator starts with you moving to the sleepy harbour town of Blomkest, where your aunt has entrusted you with running its one and only supermarket.
What she failed to explain to you is that the supermarket would be a franchise of a popular discount supermarket chain, or that you would be required to strike trade deals with the locals to expand your business empire, or that your pursuit of commerce may have lasting consequences on the local economy and environment. So much for leaving the rat race behind in the city.
It’s immediately clear that Discounty is not your average supermarket simulator, although most of its gameplay still involves the addictive mundanity of store management. You first begin your pursuit of capitalism with a small shoplot and an old-fashioned cash register. And yes, you do have to key in each item manually. (Society yearns for manual labour in video games, and this is easily the most addictive mechanic in the entire game.)
From then onward, the game progresses in a predictable fashion. Your days are filled with managing inventory, buying furniture for your store, and keeping your customers happy. As you upgrade your store with more shelves and item variety, you begin to attract more customers and eventually earn enough to unlock a store expansion. You can even customise the interior and exterior of your store, if you’re fond of decorating.
But store manager is just one half of the role you play in Discounty. During the hours before your shift begins and after your shift ends, the game presents a surprisingly expansive narrative that unfolds in three acts. The main quest follows the expansion of Discounty and its impact on Blomkest, but there are also friendship quests with each of the town’s inhabitants where you truly become a member of the community.
However, the in-game clock is always ticking away so choose how to spend your time wisely. While the game doesn’t punish you for taking more time to complete quests, there are certain requirements you have to work around. For one, you can’t avoid working your shift six days a week without consequence, and certain story events are only going to trigger at a specific time of day.
As a chronic min-maxer when it comes to simulation games, working around Discounty‘s time constraints is a huge part of the fun. There’s also a great sense of progression as you slowly unlock more quality of life features, allowing you to fast travel across town or manage your store more efficiently. One of the big ones is an upgrade from cash register to barcode scanner, although the developers recently added an option to swap between either one depending on how you’re feeling that day.
Having said that, there are certain aspects of Discounty that leaves room for improvement. The inventory management system is clunky at best with everything confined to the hot bar and no option to drag and drop any item’s placement. Having to hold down the mouse button to pick up every single item in the game also wears you down over time, especially since you have to do it at least a dozen times each day.
In my playthrough, there were also a few story quests that didn’t trigger correctly because I had fast traveled into the location. Thankfully, you can still work around this by taking the paths you would normally take to get there, and it helps that they’re clear and direct with their quest instructions. In particular, I appreciated the game noting when a quest would take some time to complete, so I didn’t waste any time searching for solutions that weren’t available yet.
Even despite its rougher edges, there’s a lot of things that Discounty gets right. There’s a great balance between its identity as a supermarket simulator and its larger overarching narrative, culminating in twenty hours of undeniably addictive gameplay. What makes it even better is the developers have continued to release free story expansions and bug fixes post-launch, which gives you even more reason to return to Blomkest even after you complete the main story.
Verdict: A Must-Play Supermarket Sim
Discounty is like Stardew Valley meets Supermarket Simulator, but if you worked as the store manager at JojaMart. If you didn’t immediately gasp in understanding, this narrative-driven supermarket simulator is about to have a lot of surprises in store. Culminating in twenty hours of highly addictive gameplay, Discounty features a great balance between its identity as a supermarket simulator and its overarching narrative, plus a free story expansion already out.
