"Hmm... even if the lights are out, I can still water the plants and feed the animals.

But why does it feel like I'm being watched?"



A Pet Shop After Dark is a cute and short meta horror game made by the same people who produced A Year of Springs, a game some might be more familiar with. I'd heard good things about Springs before so I thought I'd pick up this game on a whim, as the latter seemed to appeal more to my tastes.

The game starts off with our nameless protagonist accepting an overnight job at a pet and plant store. All she is told is to water the plants, feed the (invisible) animals, and never turn off the lights. As it were, it is literally impossible to interact with the lights in the game itself so the loop continues of you performing these two tasks until you realize this is the kind of game where you have to mess with the files.

A lot of people seem to be over these types of games, but I find the unorthodox way of creating puzzles and scenarios to be pretty interesting and fun. Though this game also has the 4th wall breaking trope of characters talking directly to you, I never found it to be grating or immersion breaking. The game really plays to its strengths with presenting itself simply and having (most) of its puzzles follow up in a similar fashion. Each puzzle has an interesting answer, and it (mostly) never drags its feet too long to get stale.

My issue with talking about Pet Shop is this: I, obviously, dont own a computer. I played this on the steamdeck. And as anyone who owns a steamdeck knows: desktop mode is a fucking affront to this world. Basic actions like pulling up a keyboard are notioursly obnoxious and time consuming. And as most of this game's puzzles take place in the files of the game, it was obviously absurdly difficult and frustrating for me to play it. So, between the later puzzles becoming pretty tedious and the already annoying task of navigating the deck's horrible pc controls: I had a pretty bad time.

In general, I think this game is quite solid. If you like these types of games, I would recommend checking it out. Though... I said this before in my Unreal Life review, but when your gameplay is something of a one trick pony, it is good to never linger on it for too long. Amaze with your clever, but short, solution to a problem and move on. If something like this takes me more than 8 minutes to figure out, I'm pissed. Like I said, the later puzzles tend to do this and become too convoluted/repetitive to be fun. I know that personally, I hate puzzles with all my heart and I want to never look at another puzzle again, but despite that I can recognize that this is a cool, small game and others may not struggle as much as me.

-1 point for being on itchio