Pay at the Pump Review (PC)

It’s a quarter after midnight, and I am exhausted. The graveyard shift is all too taxing—no, draining, more so given that the customers are about as cooperative as a bag of a felt nails and the night is about as bleak as a shriveled blanket. It’s a gas station, and so, I don’t expect much from the job. Yet, as the hours tick away and the starry-eyed patrons drizzle their gallons into their vehicles, I can’t help but wonder if I’m living, or if I’m forever returning to a perpetual nightmare—a loop, or a viscous cycle that knows no bounds.

I’ve played more than enough Boba Teashop and Happy’s Humble Burger Farm to know that night work, in particular, isn’t for the feint of heart. It’s the same case with Pay at the Pump. It’s so on the nose, in fact, that it took roughly three minutes for me to figure out that its world was a little, I don’t know, out of the ordinary. The customers — oh, they would come and go. But for every once in a while, another strange event would occur, and it wouldn’t be long before I’d spot a ripple in the atmosphere—a sudden shift in tone that would lead me to believe that something else was happening from behind the smokescreen of an otherwise ordinary storefront.

The game itself didn’t ask much of me. Well, it asked about as much as any game about gas station work could possibly ask. The work, however, wasn’t what drove the experience; it was the strange folk who would frequent the pumps and leave me with a string of questions. Don’t get me wrong, I hated the job — yet it had its perks, albeit of the supernatural sort.

Pump No. 666, Please

Pay at the Pump tricked me into believing that some people were demonic, when in reality, it was its retro visuals that made all of the customers come across as wooden and, I don’t know, aesthetically shoddy. At first, I assumed that I would have to look much, much deeper into the looking glass to decipher a deity from a compassionate elderly woman. After a short time, though, I figured out that, good or bad, everybody had something to hide, and that nobody had a proper motive to fill their gas tanks.

In the short amount of time that I spent with Pay at the Pump, I aimlessly wandered the barren quarters of the station, wondering when the hourglass on the graveyard shift would tipple its final grain of sand, and how I would survive until morning without mistakingly hitting a pensioner on the forehead. It was a short trial, albeit one that required me to spend time with questionable folk who, frankly, had little to no idea how to walk, let alone work a vending machine without pestering me about where to insert the coins. Did I enjoy the experience of playing the faithful gas station attendant? Eh, yes and no.

Pay at the Pump had just as many flaws as it did great qualities. The atmosphere, for example, took me back to the golden age of half-baked horrors of the nineties, as did its laughably poor characters and animations. Yet, it also harbored some painfully dull elements — the lightning, or lack thereof, for instance. It also failed to conceive a compelling narrative and a proper sense of progression, which, with hindsight, managed to become the nail in the coffin in an otherwise solid indie horror.

All Outta Gas

If you’ve slugged through the likes of Boba Teashop—yet another PSX-like indie horror that makes an effort to fuse chore core mechanics into deeply disturbing environments that bend and wean the more you play—then you ought to know how Pay at the Pump finds its rhythm. In short, it involves tending to the kiosk of a dimly lit storefront, and catering for guests who visit, even if it requires going out of your way to fulfill their requests and participating in, well, non-kiosk related matters. Alas, there isn’t anything majorly difficult for you to tackle here, though there are certain clients that demand that you pay attention to their stories and decide how to handle their issues.

Pay at the Pump isn’t so much of a chore-driven game as it is an open-ended canvas of nonsensical storytelling and oddball caricatures of regular citizens. It’s one of those sort of games that snowball as you willingly subject yourself to its kookiness and diluted atmosphere. Simply, the closer you look, and the more you allow yourself to switch off, the stranger things gradually become. To that end, the only thing that you have to do is spectate from afar and go with the flow, so to speak. Again, like Boba Teashop, but without the pearls. Well, sort of.

The bad news here is that, aside from the characters and all-round opaque ambience that collectively flesh out the game, there isn’t a great amount for you to interact with. Frankly, it’s more the case of walking from point A to point B and rolling with the punches, so to speak. There isn’t much replay value here, either, which makes it something of a one-and-done gig that, despite having several solid moments, leave a lot to be desired.

Verdict

While there’s no denying the fact that Pay at the Pump harbors some great little gimmicks and kooky caricatures in its dainty PSX-inspired world, the truth here is that, with little to no proper storytelling tropes or fixed goals to rifle through, it is rather difficult to enjoy the breadth of the journey without feeling at a loose end. Don’t get me wrong, the world itself is a lot of fun to meander through (although incredibly dim and somewhat barebones), as is the process of meeting customers and analyzing their minor imperfections and demonic tendencies. But that’s about as far as I’m willing to take it, though, because although there is plenty to enjoy, there is still so much to be desired.

With all of the above said, Pay at the Pump does tether itself to an oddly entertaining thriller that has a good variety of frightful encounters and peculiar happenings. It isn’t much, but if you’re easily swayed by eccentric characters and disturbing locales, then you should be able to get your money’s worth here.