
Taking A Look At Schedule I
It’s time to look at the hottest new simulation game that has not even left early access yet. Wait a moment, you doing what in this game? OMG. It’s time to start a growing empire.
It’s not that shocking a game with this theme has gone quite viral. I somehow racked up almost 50 hours playing it just in a couple of days. You could say it’s almost as addicting as the product I'm selling in-game.
You are living out of an RV with a couple of plants. Occasionally you help your uncle with some chores as he is letting you park your RV on his property. That is until law enforcement shows up to arrest him for his side business he has going on.
You out of desperation in wanting to save some potted plants have taken off in your RV hoping for a new and better life elsewhere. Occasionally you contact your uncle for some advice and some of his connections into his world.
The new town you find yourself in is not so friendly to your kind. Outside of a couple of bucks left in some hidden stashes by your uncle back when he used to run around this town. You have every little left even more so after an act of violence is made against you to scare you out of town. You sadly no longer have your RV or any further plants.
With a couple of bucks left, you need to rebuild yourself. You end up renting out a motel room. While you pay just for a week. This place ends up being filled with some adventure and remains a spot to hide from the police. While doing other activities if you find the space for it inside.
Despite how modest of a space, it is. Along with it looking like it has not been cleaned in over a decade. It provides not only enough of a haven to start rebuilding. You end up employing another person to stay at that very motel.
You would think it is hard to get into a certain kind of business. I guess that is why the police in this town are everywhere. Even a trip to a gas station or hardware store allows you to get some critical supplies. From getting tinny little bags to soda and so many other items. Things end up getting a little strange with some of them.
Thankfully due to your uncle's help. You make contact with someone who ends up setting you up with some seeds. You must pick these seeds up at random dead drops across the town. You must leave cash in another dead drop as well. I’m sure nothing illegal would be going on here.
Quite a few things are all done through using a phone in this game. Some places you end up moving into even have drop-off spots for delivery from local stores. While they charge a heavy 200 delivery fee. They are willing to deliver even late at night when the police are swarming all over the place looking for anyone up to no good.
After a little shopping. I was able to add a single plant to help liven up my motel room. It brought things to life. I was also planning to make a bank off this little plant. Soon there would not be one but almost half a dozen growing in such a tiny motel room.
This game ends up having a few mini-games in it. No, I'm not talking about the egg game you can play on the TV in the motel room either. Most activities require you to do some work.
Once my first plant grew a bit it was time to harvest and bag its flowers. I started with a basic trimer but at a very affordable price, you can upgrade to an electronic one where you can just hold down the button and harvest a planet with ease and swiftness.
After doing some harvesting. It was time to bag some flowers for my future customers. Some of those customers have such low standards you don’t even need to bag or jar anything for them. They will take it right out of your dirty hands if you let them.
You then need to hit the town and find some buyers. Everyone as it turns out loves free samples. Well almost everyone. Some people claim they don’t and sometimes require a few free samples before they are willing to become your client. I think such individuals are just scamming me for free products. I have such a high-profit margin that it matters little in the long run.
In no time your phone is always getting spammed with texts of people wanting to do some business with you. At all hours of the day. Even in the late-night hours the town you are in has a curfew and will arrest you on sight if they can taze and cuff you. I recommend not letting them do that.
Thankfully the bank in the town is quite relaxed. They let you put in $10k cash per week no questions asked. That ends up being great as some businesses in this town only do card transfers. Then you have those looking to do some off-the-book stuff only wanting cash. Cash is not a struggle anymore after a short amount of time.
You even find yourself needing to buy some local business that will help you with having too much cash on hand. Each one of them can handle different daily amounts. I’d find myself making a trip to each one I'd buy every day. I did not want to fill a motel room with cash after all.
After a while, you end up moving out of the cramped motel room into an apartment. While that provides a little more space. It’s not long before you outgrow that as well. In the end, you might even find yourself having an operation out of a warehouse down at the docks.
I preferred the barn. It was in the middle of a wooded area. Almost no one ever came there to bother me. It was a decent enough size for how large I wanted my operation to grow.
While I tried to go quite sometime without hiring some extra work at the barn. Outside of those who helped move what I was growing. There came a point in time when I got tired of staying up past 5 AM getting the next day's shipment ready.
I did find those who are willing to work for you in a certain industry are way overcharged. They are also quite lazy and even a bit incompetent that if the shelf they have been assigned to get supplies from becomes empty they will sit around not doing anything.
If anything, I feel these employees were trying to hustle me. They wanted me to hire someone who only moved items from one shelf to another. That sounds like to me getting your friend an easy job. I was not willing to shell out that kind of money. So, I kept just a single part-time worker on for most of my time.
They for sure create quite a mess as well. It was tempting to just hire someone to clean up the mess. As with many places I ended up operating out of. I’d just let stuff pile up for way too long before bagging it all and tossing it into a recycler for a few extra bucks.
As after all. I was creating top product. I was charging top price. It took a little longer to sell but I could spend less on having to hire a medium workforce to keep up with demand. Who would cut into the bottom line so much that I found it better to do most of the work myself.
While I always stayed true to just wanting to grow and sell flowers. There were other products you could create and sell as well. I found them to be interesting things to check out but not what I wanted my operations to focus around.
Perhaps one of the more amusing things to do in the game was to mix your product with other indigents you could buy at the store. They could do everything from making people bald, exploding, or even turning them into cyclopes!
You could always tell if someone was a customer of mine. As the stuff I mixed some flowers with turned them into cyclopes! It used to make them bald, but a game update changed one of the effects to that instead.
This game even has a Co-Op option. Everything is however combined, and I found that a bit annoying. Same cell phone, clients, and bank account. If one person sent out a text for something you would see it as well. Along with spending and other things.
It seems like Co-Op needs a little polish. For a day to advance, everyone must go to sleep. So, if you need to AFK you have to log out. Then if you missed how to do something sometimes the game would give you a short little tutorial and other times it would not.
There is also no in-game chat system that I was aware of for the players to communicate with each other. While that was easy to get around with Steam Chat or Discord. That still seems to be quite lacking for Co-Op gameplay.
While it was a blast to play in single-player mode. Some of my best moments were in Co-Op. My friend would watch as I'd return after a late-night run to the house that was always swarming with cops. More times than not I'd have a horde of them cashing after me. He had to bail me out a few times using a car.
There were also just a lot of fun times riding around on my skateboard. While sure there are cars in the game. They were not ones I cared much for. Other than the van when I needed to move large amounts of supplies myself.
While there are a few things that need some fixing in this game. It is fully playable now and quite enjoyable. It also looks like there are still a few large things the developer plans to add to the game before it gets released at some point in a couple of years.
Screenshots were taken and content was written by @Enjar about Schedule I.
Disclosure. This review was written while the game was in early access.