An interesting game idea that I wanted to be much better, resale shop with bidding. The main issue is that it gets very repetitive quickly with no definite forward progress or indicator where you are in the game.

Am I halfway through? 1/4th through? How am I even doing? There's just not a ton of feedback in an form.

5/10

A game with a solid premise and really fun gameplay loop brought way down by some of the most insipid writing I think I've ever experienced. Does the writing matter in a job sim game? No, but the writing is so shit that I couldn't just ignore it, and it also effects the gameplay.
In gas station simulator, every now and then something weird will happen. A customer comes in and just drops a fish on the ground and leaves. It's cool, it's fun, and most importantly it's infrequent enough that you don't expect it. In barn finders, you explore 1 regular barn without anything paranormal happening in the entire game. There is not a single normal ass barn outside of the tutorial. I was actually so bored of aliens by the end of the game that when I saw a level called "Logging Barn" I got excited because it was a genuine surprise that the game would take me to someplace without a crazy conspiracy or ghosts or some other shit. Of course that level turned out to be mostly a 'hidden' alien mothership that had fuckall to do in it.
Outside of the writing bombarding you with weird shit until it's not even surprising anymore, it's also painfully unfunny. How about a fart sound every time you crouch? How about every level having a toilet that you can take a shit in? How about finding golden toilet paper as collectibles? How about some very very questionable characters that aren't quite racist caricatures enough that I stopped playing but are enough to make me grit my teeth whenever they showed up on screen? Like they're not "Jesus Christ I'm refunding this" bad but are bad enough that multiple high rated steam reviews mentioned them and you know it's a problem when even steam users agree that it's not a good look.
Frustrating game. If you're out of job sims to play with a podcast on it can scratch the itch, but I don't really think the genre is sparse enough that you need to dig through the bargain bin.

Just another one of those light sim career games that all play more or less the same and is as such more or less equally as enjoyable. In this one, you clear junk and clean up in order to try and find valuables to sell in your shop. There's maybe ten levels to do this in and then the game is over, without the game ever becoming more than the sum of its parts. I wanted a simple busywork game that lasted a few hours, and I got exactly that. It's exactly what you think it is and the redneck theme is fun and sets it apart from the usual doctor and contractor sims. I don't know. It's obviously not high game art, but it's all right even if it's being outpaced by similar games that offer more functionality and polish.

Barn Finders is another one of those games where the reality of playing something isnt anywhere close to what you imagined it would be like. At its core, finding items, selling them and such sounds like it should be quite fun but it falls apart pretty fast thanks to a lack of locations and a buy/sell mechanic thats just all too overly simplistic.

It all leads to a feeling that you've seen and done everything less than a couple of hours into it and from then on its just a rather grindy chore, revisiting locations for scrap, spraying paintings with water and occasionally pressing a button to kick obvious thieves out of the shop. The weird 'Eurojank' humour is also incredibly hit and miss.

Sure sometimes it can be fun and it can be relaxing just hunting round locations but theres too much jank and not enough content to really make this a good pickup.

It's baffling this game is being taken and reviewed as a career simulator type game. Admittedly I went in with similar expectations but, on the contrary, I received a collect-a-thon game with occasional de-emphasized platforming and some career simulator aspects between levels. With it came a natural compulsion to 100% each individual stage and find every secret, and what I was rewarded with was a surprisingly charming little world full of humor reminiscent of the early 2000's (complete with randomly farting when you crouch).

I can't say I praise this game as being a masterpiece or a necessity in anyone's game catalogue. I think a certain type of person will enjoy this game immensely and I happened to be one of them.

Skip the Bid Wars DLC though, that was some garbage.

Another game that falls under the umbrella of "Esoteric Career Simulators". This time around we roleplay as stereotypical southerners salvaging items from abandoned barns and selling the items off for money.

The biggest issue this game presented was in its boring gameplay loop. Finding items for free gave no incentive to get a high profit for them at the store, and the only purchases available being mediocre tool upgrades makes any money you do earn feel meaningless. Also for some reason, there was sometimes a racist yellowface caricature on the back of my store on the Employee Of The Month plaque, like I don't even give a shit if the devs are "racism falls under free speech" weirdos it's just unnecessary mate. It adds nothing, doesn't correlate to any other humour in the game, and just makes the devs look like dickheads.