Supermarket Chaos Testbericht (PC)

Supermarket Chaos is, for lack of a better description, a grocery-studded version of Librarian: Tidy Up the Arcane Library. Chaotic in nature, yet as equally cozy and as inviting as it sounds on paper, indie studio BunnyHop brings you aboard with thousands of scattered jigsaw pieces, sixteen aisles of clutter, and a job that makes minimum wage look incomprehensibly appealing. It’s best not to delve any deeper into it than that. It’s cleaning, but with ramen and teabags.

The concept is simple: repair the damages that were caused by an incompetent AI robot that, for some reason, figured it would be better to wreak havoc on the store than keep it “Feng Shui.” With the idiotic bot out of the picture, it falls to you to sweep, organize, and replenish the stock. And when I say stock, I mean, thousands of items that range from frozen foods to books, noodles to fruit, and so on and so forth. With that, the objective here is unapologetically simple: to gradually sift through the remnants of what can only be described as a post-apocalyptic bombshell, and to return each item to their respective location in the store. If you’re expecting anything more than that, then you should consider taking your rubber gloves and dossier elsewhere.

Supermarket Chaos isn’t one for slapping you on the knuckles for whenever you make a mistake, nor is it one for hanging over your shoulder like an assistant manager with a god complex. With no time limits to fret about or “challenges” to overcome, what you have, really, is a peaceful, albeit drawn-out organizing sim that requires you to rebuild from the ground up. It isn’t an exciting experience by any means, though it is an oddly satisfying one that, despite having little to boast about other than somewhere in the vicinity of 4,000 items to restock, is more than capable of keeping your mind buried in the frozen food aisle.

If Supermarket Chaos was strictly about stocking the shelves and calling it a day, then frankly, it wouldn’t be much of a game as it would be a strenuous lecture on self control and patience. Thankfully, though, there is a little more to this cleaning gig than what initially meets the eye. See, with enough time comes a plethora of upgrades—abilities, if you will, with which you can adopt and use to make your role as the all-seeing guru of chaos a lot easier to manage. For example, you can unlock the ability to handle more items at once, or use a laser-like vision to locate the correct shelves for each item. The point is, the more you tackle, the easier the job becomes. It’s a simple setup, and one that clearly takes a similar approach as Librarian: Tidy Up the Arcane Library. The question is, does it make for a satisfying experience?

Of course, Supermarket Chaos doesn’t exactly capture lightning in a bottle with its concept. It’s light, basic, and oftentimes monotonous work that doesn’t leave a lot to the imagination. But, to be fair, at no point does it aim to be anything other than what it describes itself as on the tin. Simply, it gives you a supermarket, and it scoots you in the right direction with a treasure trove of leftover groceries that each need allocating to their rightful destination on the board. If that doesn’t get your attention, then frankly, you might struggle to find anything of value in these aisles.

Unlike Librarian: Tidy Up the Arcane Library, there are no magical infusions to soak up here, nor are there any fantastical surprises that can keep you on your toes over the course of your shift. Instead, you have a familiar location, a labyrinth of clinically white-washed walls, and mounds upon mounds of fruit. To that end, it doesn’t deliver a visually compelling world of wonders or multi-purpose creations. It’s a store — and a messy one, at that. The only thing that might catch your eye here is a complete aisle—a section that you yourself can bring back to life with a lot of time and legwork. It’s finding the time to resurrect it, that’s the tough part.

It’s a lot better to think of a game like Supermarket Chaos as a means to an end than a full-fledged game that can cure your dopamine addiction. Given that there is no action, no sneaky surprises, and no side effects that can shift the tide against your favor at a moment’s notice, you honestly don’t have a lot to fret about here. It’s honest work that keeps a lid on the consequences, nothing more, nothing less.

Given its lack of challenges and mid-game curveballs, Supermarket Chaos might not appeal to the die-hard gamer. For fans of incremental chore core simulators, it ought to check a lot of the right boxes. However, for those who get their kicks from conquering great feats, there’s a drastically lower chance that it will satisfy the most elementary needs. But then, the devil is in the details with this one.

Verdict

Combing through Supermarket Chaos is like working for minimum wage on a late-night shift at a local grocery store: dull, lonely, and yet, oddly therapeutic. It might not be the most rewarding job in the world, much less one that pays well with various benefits and post-game bonuses. That said, it is satisfying work that is, strangely, surprisingly easy to roll with for an hour or two.

Let it be said that, while Supermarket Chaos might lack the elemental spirit and wizardry of Librarian: Tidy Up the Arcane Library, there is a pleasant chore core simulator here that delivers precisely what it wants to accomplish. The odds of it sneaking its way into the glass cabinet of a prestigious jewelers are slim I’ll admit, given that it’s neither visually striking or smitten in gold and lace. Still, for what it’s worth, I will say that, as far as cleaning gigs go, Supermarket Chaos is a lot better than the average fish-out-of-water piece of shovelware that you find on the shelves.