From having to go out and pick up all the recycled items yourself to operating a fleet of workers to do the work for you. This game has a couple of different phases as you grow your recycling empire to make the big bucks.

Any time you are interacting with something for the first time in the Recycling Center Simulator whether it be equipment or a new type of staff member. The game gives you a visual and text short rundown of what it is.

I felt a game like this more than meets any need to have a tutorial showing you the basics. This is a good thing since when you click on new machines or even explore what kind of staff you can hire. There are no upfront details until you pull the trigger and spend the money.

These things were not needed. It was quite easy to work out what things did all on their own. I would sometimes even just skip over the tutorial helper that would pop up and just keep going.

Things start as basic as one might expect. You have a parking lot area with a couple of overhands and some metal storage containers you are working and living out of. In one of the overhangs, you are setting your equipment up and the other is for storage.

As you progress further into the game. You can buy a bigger parking lot area, storage, and a place for your machines. The only thing you can’t upgrade is the little area you are living out of.

This game has quite a lot of micromanagement in it. The more you are willing to do things yourself the better of an outcome it is. However, once you can scale that benefit is outpaced by how far you can take things.

I choose to take my time and manage most aspects of everything myself. While that did slow down my progress in this game with how many total days it took for me to unlock everything. I ended up finding a lot of the tasks in the game rather relaxing.

Recycling Center Simulator has a lot of opportunities for you to bargain for better prices. Before you can even go out and collect any recycling you need to get contracts to do so. Later on, you can bargain with the NPCs for how much you want to sell any processed recycling you have created.

The first couple of days in the game you are just getting one or two scrap contracts. As you progress along on your own, I was getting up to four. This I felt was still not enough.

I ended up finding out after hiring an assistant that they also get you contracts on top of any you get off the computer yourself. They tended to be much higher prices than I could get. However, by that point, I was looking to get as much scrap as possible to progress along in the game at a higher rate.

Once you have a scrap contract it’s time to head off to the site itself and collect the recycling. Each contract you can only enter once. They also tell you how long they last from ending that day to up to three days to go out and collect.

Early on you lack having any upgraded tools. The trash bags you use can only carry 10 kg. You can’t pick any locks or break open any creates. As one might expect for the bulk of gameplay while collecting recycling you just run around picking it up.

I kind of wish you could break down things like furniture. Sadly, that was not an option. The biggest items you can pick up are cardboard boxes, a broken guitar, and vases. These items are also to pick to put into the trash bag so you have to toss them one at a time into the truck.

As you level up your reputation from getting 100% collation on sites, sorting, and selling. You end up unlocking quite a few different sites to collect resources out of. They are always run down and look like the entire place just needs to be torn down.

While going for 100% every time was my goal. The game sometimes would hide some small piece of trash so well after exploring around an area a few times over I'd just give up. Thankfully much later on you can unlock a trash scanner to highlight anything remaining. That ended up speeding up my clearing times and I no longer had to run looking for a spring or a piece of paper I missed hiding under a chair or something.

Out of all the locations, I think I hated these construction types the most. Lots of little areas inside and large items that you need to take back to the truck yourself as they don’t fit into the garbage bag.

At the very least your character can toss things quite far. I would end up using the open windows at the front of the building to toss things down either into or near the truck itself.

There is also no fall damage. So, once I made it up to the third floor and picked everything up. I’d just jump right off the roof to the ground level. Sometimes something I tossed was also stuck up on the roof of my truck so I needed to land on it to collect that item.

As you progress along you end up having a chance to get some rather large collection contracts. You might get something that only has 40 or so kg of stuff to pick up. Then you would have 100+ kg. Those larger jobs were just insane.

I ended up doing the collection part of the game myself for quite some time. I just found it rather relaxing. I’d usually just toss the bigger items as close to the truck as if I could not land them inside it in a giant pile. I’d then work from there to get everything in the truck.

There however did come the point where I had more than enough cash on hand and I was getting a little bored of this part of the game after doing it so much. So, I hired a fleet of workers. After getting enough contracts I'd then assign each one of them to one of the sites.

While these workers were much slower than I could clear a single site on. Always coming back after being away for a set amount of time. They were able to amplify my recycling collection to such a large degree. I cost to hire them ended up being more than worth it.

I consider that part of the I'm getting lazy phase. By then I got tired of doing the mini-games I had unlocked the tools for as well. Like the lockpick for opening doors and cash registers and the crowbar to get gold bars out of crates. These mini-games ended up covering my staff costs quite a few times when I was low on cash. So, I did not mind them too much. They were however quite the basic mini-game you would expect for lockpicking.

During the early days you are sorting any recycling you bring back yourself into five different types: wood, plastic, metal, paper, and glass. You also empty all the items on your truck and place them on the conveyor belt.

At first, I was trying to sort everything as quickly as possible as I thought if items hit the end of the conveyor belt they would be lost. After coming back from one massive run. I over time failed to keep up. Thankfully I discovered things will just sit there and collect at the end waiting to be sorted. This was quite a large relief on my end.

The biggest part of doing the shorting yourself is for some salvage bonus for not messing up. Early on this helped me bring in a little extra profit. It is however a time-consuming and perhaps the only stressful thing in the entire game if you could even call it stressful to begin with.

I would after a while get tired of offloading and then later on doing the sorting. This is where staff started to come into play. They are not that expensive and are the key to scaling your operation.

Despite how many things I was able to automate or just require me to micromanager an employee to go do something for me. I would end up hauling over the bins of sorted recycling and dumping them into each of the processing machines I slowly unlocked by hand.

The game just starts you off with one. Every night I'd run over and toss in the single recycling type I had. Process it and then go sell what little I had. Slowly unlock all five types of recycling after a couple of days.

I’d then place down a pallet for putting the progressed material on. Sometimes I'd wait till the pallet was full. Other days I wanted or needed the cash to pay wages or operating costs. So, I'd just weel over to store any little bits I had.

Early selling I was not able to bargain for the price I wanted to sell at. I just had to accept the prices being offered by the few people willing to buy the recycled process scraps I had.

After a little while I unlocked the ability to take on contracts to sell larger and more complex items. You could even bargain for a better price. I always tried for 50% more and sometimes I got it and other times maybe a 20% or so increase in selling price. Regardless getting a bit extra on each sale helped in the long term.

Slowly over time, my small-time operations were starting to grow. Thankfully the game does not force the ending of the day. The game clock will just hit 21:00. I would sometimes have massive processing operations running for quite some time after many days of collecting recycling.

Then came the time I could afford to expand out how large each of the spaces was. Along with slowly upgrading to tier-two machines. These would further refine the types of recycling I was collecting. Making me a little more along the way.

Then came the point where I unlocked the third tier that I could process items into. Each recycling type had at least two final items I could make from pipes to envelopes. These things would take massive amounts of recycling to fulfill any contract to sell things at a decent price.

Final Thoughts

By the late stage of the game, it took me forever to gather enough recycling on my own by hand and I was getting bored of picking up stuff by hand anyways. So, I did a massive hiring for a fleet of trucks and people to head out each day to the sites I picked up. I had assistance that got me five contrasts and I bargained for a further two. So, I had seven 7 trucks and employees who each could do one site per day.

I had long given up sorting the recycling myself once it got back to my site. I even had robots I'd tell to pick up pallets and move them to storage. Just about everything I could automate that still required me to do a bit of micromanaging I did.

I then spent my days looking over the buy contracts. Picking what items to process and produce next. Then running the machines and ensuring everything was working. Most of the time I'd wait three or four days between production cycles to save on costs.

Then I'd have a massive grinding session of resources and selling off. My storage area would be filled with items to sell. Those days were quite profitable. I ended up getting to a point where I had lots of cash on hand and nothing but my daily expenses remaining. Nothing left to buy.

Information

Screenshots were taken and content was written by @Enjar about Recycling Center Simulator.

Disclosure. A review copy of the game was received for free.