Chop Chop Inc. Review (PC)

If you were wondering where on earth that wooden computer came from, then I can assure you that it wasn’t a prestigious craftsman who delivered it, but an idiotic, slightly in-over-his-head tree surgeon who thought it would be a grand idea to bulldoze a forest to forge an empire. To the common man, that same questionable creation would seem like a pointless contraption with no real value. But in his mind, it’s a roundhouse kick to the company that fired him. Or at least, that’s what everyone is led to believe, anyway. At this point, nobody really asks questions. The drone flies in with absurdly shoddy wooden sculptures, and the general public just sort of, you know, accepts it.

It feels as if A Game About Chopping Trees trained me for NullRef Entertainment’s Chop Chop Inc. Given that I clocked more hours than I’d like to admit in a world that was quite literally about, well, chopping down trees, it seems as if the training wheels have fallen apart and the stars have miraculously aligned. For the second time in less than a month, duty has called to poach me for yet another perfectly ridiculous incremental excursion out in the neck of the woods that only a select few bother to pass through. Once again, I find myself with an axe, a forest, and a chance to prove that even the most boring jobs can be made to feel worth the blood, sweat and tears.

Before cutting into the root of Chop Chop Inc., I have to give it some credit. Unlike A Game About Chopping Trees, it does, surprisingly, offer a lot more than the average chore-oriented simulator. Clearly, it still finds itself on the same spectrum as most of its kin, as does it orbit a familiar schematic that’s about as niche as a rhythm-based cooking sim. However, I’d be lying if I said that I wasn’t immediately taken back by Chop Chop Inc. Amazed? No — but genuinely surprised at just how much it was able to cram onto an otherwise barren canvas. Chopping down trees and stacking planks was one thing, naturally, yet it gave way to a lot more than mere planks of wood and a monotonous routine. It just took me a little while to realize that, beneath its simplistic design, it had a lot of weight to it.

If Chop Chop Inc. was about swinging an axe at a tree and nothing more, then I might have abandoned it long before the first axed trunk found fresh roots to latch onto. Against all odds, though, it gave me a lot more to hack at alongside its generic swing-and-stack gameplay sequences. For instance, it handed me an opportunity to use the wood, and to unlock blueprints that could be molded into a wide variety of decorative items—planes, clocks, and model train sets, to list just a handful. It also gave me a chance to do so much more than A Game About Chopping Trees ever could. I could construct bridges, expand the world, and even venture out to a local settlement to renovate former buildings, befriend potential clients, and, weirdly, wax poetic with an enigmatic beaver.

It took less than fifteen minutes to uncloak Chop Chop Inc. and figure out how I’d be spending the remainder of my time in its wooded world. With as little as an axe and a flip book of creative possibilities, it simply introduced me to a vibrant forest of furrowed trees of all shapes and sizes, and a paper thin plot that, at least from what I could gather, was about an ex-furniture store employee who, after losing their job, decided to “branch out” and launch their own enterprise on the far corners of the city. It didn’t need to tell me any more than that. I got it, as did I understand that, in order to build an empire of wood, I’d need to ruffle a few feathers and comb over a lot of splinters.

The problem I had with A Game About Chopping Trees was that it didn’t give me a lot more to do other than, well, openly subject myself to the simple act of deforestation. But in Chop Chop Inc., it felt that there was always something to sink my axe into. Granted, most of the experience was exactly what I thought it would be: swinging an axe at dozens of trees and collecting planks of wood. Yet, even when I obtained a boatload of it, the opportunities would continue to arise. The catalog would bulk out its pages, and before long it would introduce me to numerous creative ideas that I could capitalize on. I’d craft an object from the wood that I had stockpiled, and I’d ship it out to the local community. The process would repeat itself, and I’d once again set out to make something else.

Given the amount of content that Chop Chop Inc. stuffs into its core, it feels like an insult to compare it to a common chore core sim. Don’t get me wrong, it has most of the same generic gameplay mechanics, as does it feature a seemingly endless cycle that doesn’t really have an endgame or an objective. That said, for what should be an affordable alternative to therapy, I have to admit that, material-wise, it clearly crams a lot into its open-ended campaign. From its contracts to its world-building tasks, its characters to its endless crafting recipes and upgrades, NullRef Entertainment  packs quite a punch with its approach to upholding a sense of longevity.

Of course, there is still a relatively simple game here, and one that primarily serves as a budget-friendly elixir of bottled therapy. That said, it is satisfying to play around with, as is it teeming with all of the usual sandbox elements that make any chore core game feel oh-so-more-ish and engaging. To that end I’d say that, love it or hate it, there’s a perfectly serviceable game here. Eat your heart out, A Game About Chopping Trees. 

Verdict

Chop Chop Inc. is anything but a splinter in the world of chore-oriented entertainment. On the contrary, it’s a weighty experience that crams a lot into its wooded biome, with a sizable variety of mini-games, missions, world-shaping events, and humorous shenanigans. It is, for lack of a better description, a breath of fresh air—an experience that knows its worth yet manages to exceed its expectations in the long term. Oh, it’s still a simple affair, but it’s also one that provides a lot more than the bare necessities. On that basis, I’d chalk it up as a triumph.