Black Friday Janitor: Đánh Giá Việc Dọn Dẹp Toàn Bộ Trung Tâm Mua Sắm (PC)

There are two things that make up a typical Black Friday: bargains, and chaos. Of course, the part that we, as consumers, don’t often see is the aftermath of the chaos—the Monday after the final sale. The socks in the toy store; the boots in the kitchenware section; the jumbo plushy in the movie theater; and boxes on top of other boxes in palm-sized storage rooms. If you’re smart enough, you would steer clear of such a place. If you’re a janitor, and if you’re contractually obligated to clean the aftermath of the annual event, then you should probably consider asking for a raise.

Black Friday Janitor: Clean the Whole Store is a bit of an open book, in that it immediately tells you what you will be doing on Monday, Tuesday, and for the duration of a entire fortnight. It doesn’t glamorize the job, and it definitely doesn’t fool you into believing that you’re doing the world a favor by picking up a few piles of trash and returning a few items back to their shelves. Instead, it tells you that there is a work to be done, and that the only person who can do it is the one with the bucket and mop, the trash collector and all the time in the world to clean up after the Black Friday sales. Spoiler alert: it’s you. You are the janitor, and you are the only person who is willing and able to sift through the wreckage for minimum wage.

For the first time since Librarian, I feel threatened by the idea of sorting through thousands of objects in an oversized shopping mall. Usually, I’d be fine with it—the act of manually fumbling around in piles of old plushies and plastic swords. But here, in Black Friday Janitor, it feels as if there is a gargantuan shift ahead of me, and that no amount of legwork or skill tree upgrades will bring me closer to the final chapter. It isn’t just the one store that needs packing away, but dozens, perhaps even hundreds. A thousand products I can deal with, but thirty thousand? Eh, it’s a lofty shift, and I’m not entirely sure if I’m equipped to handle the freight.

Twenty minutes after I made that initial inspection, I sort of changed my mind. As one store found its way back into the light as a squeaky clean centerpiece, I began to spot the signs of a strangely addicting graft. I was eager to add a few more things to the shelves, and then a second bundle, and then a third. The trash, too, began to disappear, as did the pools of liquid. Little by little, the mall started to return to its former glory, and I was more than happy to witness its snail-like transformation. Oh, I knew how it would all end, but that didn’t stop me from wanting to bury my head in the sand and work through the night.

If there was one thing that Black Friday Janitor did and did well, it was keeping me second guessing as I went through the usual routine. Unlike most tidying up simulation games, it always had something new to show me, be it a new store, a new product, or a new challenge. With an enormous shopping mall to frame its thirty thousand items, it gave me a lot to chew on. And, to echo, I did feel a little snowed under during the initial wave, given that the mall had more stores, more bundles, and more clutter than I had ever seen in earlier installments. But then, once the training wheels slipped off, it all became a doddle. The shelves eventually found their belongings, and the task soon became a walk in the park.

The core gameplay loop behind Black Friday Janitor: Clean Up the Whole Store is awfully reminiscent of Librarian or Tidy Up Together. Similar in design, it gives you the ability to juggle items, and to manually relocate each section of the clutter in a meticulous manner. Paired with a variety of useful upgrades, the game invites you to carefully (and slowly) check each item on the floor, decipher its rightful location, and return it to its store. Similar to Librarian, you can punch holes in a skill tree to make your job a little easier. For example, you can increase your movement speed, boost your carrying capacity, and elevate your ability to spot missing products.

If Black Friday Janitor was just about returning items to various stores, then there wouldn’t be a lot to write home about here. As it turns out, though, the game does have a bit more to offer. In addition to the twenty thousand products, you also have thousands of trash piles, hundreds of spillages, and a boatload of incorrectly located items to sift through and sort. To add, you have a different checklist for each store—a list that includes a mixture of tasks, like removing a specific piece of clothing, a leftover bag, or a pool of water, and so on and so forth. It’s all straightforward legwork I’ll admit, but its inclusion of individual task lists does add a bit of extra weight to the tidying up process.

All in all Black Friday Janitor is a clean game that captures the essence of a 2000s-inspired shopping mall remarkably well. With some time-appropriate artwork, warm ambient lighting, and a ton of neat touches that befit the setting and era, it’s definitely an easy game to fold into. Moreover, it plays well, too, with some fluid mechanics and a user interface that is surprisingly intuitive and clutter resistant. Oh, it’s still incredibly messy, but that’s sort of the point of a Black Friday sale. At least it’s visually accurate, anyway.

Verdict

Black Friday Janitor: Clean Up the Whole Mall raises the bar for organizing sims with a brand-new and overwhelmingly large complex of clutter that, like any good clean-‘em-up game, houses thousands of items that you can casually stow away at your own leisure. With dozens of stores, thousands of set pieces, and a handful of odd jobs that can keep you scraping the bottom of the barrel for hours, it provides quite the chunk of material for you to work through. Combined with some smooth gameplay and a hassle-free UI, it stands out as one of the best of its kind. It’s still a bit of a niche experience, though it does provide a quick way to scratch that Librarian-powered itch.