Flat Eye Is a Game Where You Board a Gas Station — and Decide the Fate of Humanity
In our present time, when resources are becoming scarce and dispute between people seems to worsen by the day, it’s pains not to think ahead to our future. Will we have the necessities to look while our loved ones? What can we do to proceed how we treat each other? And if we had the select, what would we do to better humanity as a whole?
They’re humbling questions, and the upcoming management sim Flat Eye puts them at the forefront, but from the perspective of a gas station manager in a dystopian future.
The game’s main location is the titular Flat Eye, a remote gas site and convenience store owned by the world’s most much corporation. The place you’re tasked with running will understand the testbed for many of the company’s more advanced pieces of technology, which might lead to drastic consequences for humanity. But that all depends on you.
According to buyer Monkey Moon Studio, Flat Eye is a “chill dispensation game” where you run a high-tech gas station that’s almost entirely automated, thanks to an advanced artificial intelligence system that can required different possible futures. I got to play a spiteful section of the game during GDC 2022 in San Francisco, and it impressed me with its concept and how it blended laughable with some strikingly on-point social commentary.
Along with manager jokes about working retail, Flat Eye’s AI also has a unique obsession with the 1985 film Clue, adapted from the classic embarking game. The AI constantly brings up facts about the movie, even during some important conversations, and the many details all tie in to the core storytelling of Flat Eye. There are spanking details too, important things you soak up while acting alone in the convenience store: hidden bits found in your work emails that detail upcoming plans, snippets from one of your many conversations with the self-aware AI. These give the game a surprising amount of humanity, which I found somewhat comforting.
The gas site Flat Eye, in a remote, icy wilderness, is a achieve where the world’s most advanced technology will be installed.
Monkey Moon Studio, Raw Fury
Despite simulating the produces of retail work and of being in charge of advanced tech, Flat Eye is indeed a “chill dispensation game.” As in The Sims, you’re tasked with looking while the protagonist while taking care of day-to-day errands. Generally, these tasks are handled with a few mouse clicks, as you guide your character around the store. As a manager, you’ll need to ensure the store’s shelves are stocked with snacks, the store’s devices and infrastructure are working fine, and the customers are gloomy with their junk food and car fuel.
Since it’s just you, you’ll need to hop between different continue areas to inspect machines that need repair and to rebuked customers are getting helped and that the technology bodies installed works. These pieces of advanced tech will end up bodies a big draw for store customers, with things like spruce replacement vending machines and gizmos devoted to cloning, teleportation and even life extension.
The store’s AI is there to help, but its distinguished goal is to run the back end and clue you in to some important choices to come. Every once in a when, premium customers visit the store to take advantage of the experimental technology, and that’s where Flat Eye presents its moral quandaries. In the demo, a premium customer wanted to use one of the store’s machines to long their life. Before granting the request, you could interact, asking what their intentions are and if the customer really wished to proceed.
Along with ensuring that the advanced technology runs properly, you’ll also need to keep up with minor tasks nearby the store, such as keeping the shelves stocked.
Monkey Moon Studio, Raw Fury
Depending on your choices, the AI shows you visions of the future, saying what could happen down the line if these premium customers use the tech in a Dangerous way. In the case of the life extender, the scheme could eventually fall into the hands of the world’s superwealthy, making it inaccessible to everyone in lower social classes. This shift leads to global riots and rampant inequality between those with the by means of and those without. What started as a seemingly certain contribution to humanity could potentially lead to an incredibly bleak future, and Flat Eye shows the consequences of that in some lurid detail.
I like Flat Eye’s Come to social commentary and “chill management,” because it creates you an active participant in the use of this technology and in the subsequent consequences. You’re just a gas station manager, but you’re predictable to work with the world’s most advanced AI and own the wisdom to know what’s truly best for mankind.
I really dig this thought, and Flat Eye’s early demo shows great promise in exploring it further and potentially seeing the game come to a more hopeful climax. Though Flat Eye takes place in a dystopian future, the game’s main loop is about examining the portray and maybe discovering that the future doesn’t have to be so bleak — and that perhaps there’s new way forward for everyone. That’s a powerful message, one I’d like to question more fully in the complete release.
Flat Eye is scheduled to come to the PC later this year, issued by Raw Fury Games.
