Running a small-town supermarket is no easy feat. You’ll have to pull yourself up by your bootstraps as you perform all duties from inventory management, manning the cashier, and even janitorial work. And that’s when you are on the clock. When you are off the clock, you are expected to act as a company representative, problem solver, and the town’s go-to shoulder to cry on. If that excites you, then consider applying to Discounty regional supermarkets. You won’t regret it. (Probably)

Discounty is one part supermarket management sim and two parts mystery and life sim, akin to games like Harvest Moon and Stardew Valley. You play as a newly minted store employee turned manager overnight. As it turns out, your aunt runs a tight ship, so tight that she doesn’t mind you taking on more duties, whether you like it or not.

You have but one objective in Discounty: to grow your little corner store into the biggest supermarket chain in the area. To do this, you’ll have to sign multiple trade deals with the local producers and sell, sell, sell your way to the top until you have enough money to buy up the entire town several times over. Admittedly, that last part goes hard, but coming from an endless growth sim like Supermarket Simulator, I found the idea of dealing with the consequences of unrestricted corporate growth to be rather interesting.

The town of Blomkest is place steeped in history and superstition. People have lived there for generations and will continue to live there for as long as they are able. But that’s getting harder to do lately. If it’s not mysterious happenings going down late at night, corporations are slowly eating away at the town bit by bit, Discounty being one of them. Yes, at the end of it all, you will have to justify store growth, even if it means tearing down cherished buildings. Why, may you ask? Because Auntie Tellar said so.

And this brings me to the residents of Blomkest. They form a tight-knit community that has been through a lot over the years. They have endured misfortunes, seen their small businesses shut down one by one, and currently live under the oppression of a mysterious mist. They are wary of outsiders getting involved in their business, making it that much harder for us to promote and grow the supermarket. Thankfully, some are willing to provide products to the store in exchange for a few favors. The more favors we turn in, the more products we’ll have access to, and the more the store becomes a respectable business in the eyes of the locals.

Your 6-day work week starts exactly at 6 AM, provided you didn’t faint the night before. Since the shore opens at 9 AM, you have time to check up on other businesses and see if they have anything new to sell. You can also use this time to progress any active side quests you have. The side quests are a good way to get to know more about the townspeople, and some even allow you access to new products to put on your shelves.

Once the clock strikes 9, however, you will most likely be busy tending to the cashier station, restocking shelves, and cleaning up any messes on the floor. It honestly reminds me of the early game in Supermarket Simulator. It’s very active work. And once you reach the mid-game, time flies by far too quickly due to all the things you need to attend to. When the store closes at 5 PM, you are free to continue doing any activities you were doing before you decide to go to bed.

If you’re wondering what you do on Sundays. Well, it’s a day reserved for socializing with the locals, many of whom do not work on Sunday. Coincidentally, it is also the best time to obsessively rearrange your store’s layout without holding back. Speaking from experience, of course.

When it comes time to expand the store, the job is tied to the game’s main story. You clear specific objectives laid out to you by Auntie Tellar, and that signals the end of a chapter. There aren’t that many chapters in totality. But once you reach the second chapter, you will be hit with multi-layer objectives that will take a considerable amount of time to clear. It’s a good thing, then, that it is around this time that your character will be in the thick of all the town’s intrigue and mystery. More on that later in this review.

There are two ways to advance in the game: leveling up trade deals, and Discounty Challenges. Trade deals are also tied to story beats and will require you to do side quests to advance. Discounty Challenges, on the other hand, test your management skills. Completing challenges rewards you with points, and redeeming those points gets you access to a wider range of products. Which you’ll need to open up new sources of revenue. This is the main gameplay loop outside of the town drama you’ll eventually be drawn into.

There are only a dozen items on offer throughout the game. The selection’s not as crazy as the range of products in Supermarket Simulator. Then again, without staff helping you stock up shelves, it could turn into increasingly hectic workdays. Unlocking the barcode scanner becomes an absolute must if you don’t want to keep track of the item prices. Though I must confess that with the new level of automation, I began to miss having to punch in the numbers using my right-side keypad. It’s the only time the multiplication button gets pressed repeatedly, too.

For reasons I cannot comprehend, our character feels the need to involve themselves in everyone’s affairs. It’s like moths being drawn by the light. Our character somehow manages to be in the right place, at the right time, to give unsolicited advice. It almost reminds me of how Harvest Moon handles its random events, but in this case, the events feel less random and more time-gated. You can also trigger these events by touching highlighted objects in the world. I had no idea how much drama there is in one small town, but apparently, everyone’s got issues, and we’re somehow expected to resolve them. Lucky us.

Every once in a while, you’ll find yourself in the middle of a large mystery that takes time and effort to resolve. A few examples come to mind, namely the fog that covers the forest, the rat infestation that happens in Chapter 2, and the mischievous “spirit” that likes to prank people. Progressing these optional quests often involves talking to the right people. Most of the time, that means talking to County Representative Elmer and Tammy, the local factory owner. You’ll find out eventually why I picked these two out of everyone in town. Spoiler alert: They always find themselves at the center of all the shady stuff in town.

The 2D pixel art adds a certain charm to the game that’s almost synonymous with the genre. You can say that it makes me feel more wholesome and, dare I say it, cozy. There isn’t much to the soundtrack, other than the constant loops of calm, laid-back music. I don’t mind it in the slightest, especially when I’m too busy focusing on daily tasks and reading text on screen.

The thing that surprised me the most about this game is how I developed a vested interest in knowing the outcomes of the townspeople’s stories and, at times, wondered how my choices shaped the town’s future. I can’t go spoiling the game’s ending now, but I do feel a pang of regret having chosen progress over preservation.

Before I end this review, there are some issues I have with the game that need to be pointed out. For starters, I’ve spotted a few misspelled words while reading text. Nothing a quick day one patch can’t fix. There seem to be a few spots in the forest map where your character model just gets stuck. This is more annoying to deal with, as you will need to reload your save file and start the day again. Another annoying bug is the one where the text doesn’t update whenever I buy furniture from the hardware store. I only get to see how much additional appeal and capacity it has after I put it down in the store. It’s not much of a problem long-term after familiarizing myself; I just hate having to take a flyer on furniture whose stats may or may not work.

Discounty is a clever little storefront simulator wrapped in a veil of intrigue and mystery. I was initially drawn in by the prospect of a 2D, pixelated management sim, but I stayed for the small-town drama. It may not have the dozens of hours of gameplay like other store simulators, but there is an undeniable charm in this game, part of which is due to the writing. If you like cozy games with a dash of busy work, you’re going to like Discounty.