Most of us have had a job with a strict supervisor. But maybe none as strict as your new boss in Before Exit: Supermarket. You work one week and have to do your best to do your job, close all the doors, and turn off all the lights before you exit. Forget one minor detail and you’ll get a warning. The second time you mess up? You’ll be looking for a new job. Maybe at a gas station. Don’t put your current employer as a reference! Each day is random, and you have various tasks to fulfill before calling it a night. There are twenty different scenarios to encounter, some of which only happen if you complete a week successfully. If you enjoy cleaning-based simulators that demand attention to memory, this might be a good break from your regular job. Now you can work from home like you’ve always wanted (but no salary).

Here’s what I liked:

Nice Job, Need a Raise — The whole point of the game is to make the store perfect before you leave. It’s mostly fun as you try to complete your first week. Trying to make sure the store is spotless and all the doors and lights are taken care of. There’s stocking, cleaning, mopping, throwing away bad fruits, chasing away the last customer, bathroom duties, and even riding the carts to the proper area. The game felt fluid when using various methods of travel, such as pushing the cleaning cart or the dolly. While the game on paper seems relaxing, as there is no time limit, you do feel the immense pressure to double-check that everything is in order before you leave. If you get fired, you have to restart your whole week.

A Night You Need to Remember — Even though you have the basics of nightly duties, there are plenty of shifts where you will be kept busy. There can be a mess to clean up or old bread to put away. There is a good variety of shifts, and you discover them on your own. You go out to the floor and look around, trying to see what is out of place. You could fail several times before you start to get the hang of what exactly you’re doing wrong. Stocking can be fun, finding the items that have gaps on the shelf and refilling them. For some reason, I really enjoyed bathroom duties. Taking the cleaning cart out and refilling the toilet paper, setting the soap correctly, and flushing every single toilet just in case was great. There are a few boring scenarios where all you do is turn the closed sign around. But every week is different, and that’s what kept me going for the full completion.

Comedy Grocery Store — The game doesn’t take itself too seriously. There are odd but kind of funny moments to witness. When you leave for the night, you take a breath and look around for your boss. Suddenly, he comes out of nowhere, and you know you’re in trouble. He doesn’t talk, just grunts and makes a hand gesture. There is also the customer of the month, who sometimes appears in the store by herself. You have to chase her around the store until she leaves, but if you don’t do it constantly, you can spot her looking at items, trying to shop last-minute. This is making fun of how sometimes customers try to shop at the last minute, giving no care that they are causing the employees to stay late. I guess you’d have to work at a place with customers to really understand. The comedy is targeted to people in that type of job. The customers don’t care about your time, and the boss will fire you for something as simple as not closing a door in the bathroom. While the neglect doesn’t affect anything, the fact that you didn’t check a box on the to-do list means you can be fired and possibly struggle to get another job while trying to pay your bills.

Here’s what I didn’t like:

Frame Rate Drop — There is a specific area that really stutters. It’s the bakery. For some reason, most of the store seems okay, but once you get to that section, it’s as if a hundred online players just joined your game. The frame rate drop could be one of the worst I have ever experienced. The real lousy part is that you have to go check this spot every single day to make sure the door is closed, and the lights are off. I am a bit surprised it went through testing and still got released in this state.

Beginner’s Luck — Without a manual or even instructions on what to do, you’re thrown into your new role as the late-night closer. This game took a while for me to figure out. It didn’t help that the days are randomized. I had no clue what the garbage bags were. In fact, I thought they were markers. When stocking products, I had no clue what was considered stocked or not. Some areas looked like they needed to be stocked, but could not be interacted with. There’s also the same stuff every time. I was hoping the freezer areas would need restocking, but it never came up as a task. The signs were tough ones as well. When you fail, you get a little hint. The boss told me about banners. I had no clue what he meant because there are also hanging banners all over the store. I wasted a lot of time looking at the ceiling, trying to find out what could have been out of place. We need training at this job!

Wrap-up

Even if you can beat the game pretty fast, there are a lot of reasons to start another week. Getting to see new situations as well as trying to complete every scenario can be a good time. It’s quite simple, though it will test your attention to detail and memory to do simple tasks (like turning the closed sign). Things can be funny, but maybe not laugh-out-loud funny. There are some scenarios that can be frustrating, but play them enough times and you’ll get the hang of them. There is a serious frame drop that happens near one of the doors, and it is annoying enough to ruin your overall experience. Every time I suffered through the slowdown, I wanted to just exit the game. And without even turning off the lights first.

Score: Reader’s Choice

Before Exit: Supermarket was published and developed by Take IT Studio! sp. z o. o. on Xbox One. It was released on September 30 2024, for $6.99. A copy was provided for review