Gas Station Simulator is a deeply therapeutic experience

The notion of building a business from the ground up with your two bare hands is a deeply romantic and idealistic one—and that’s the charm that made Gas Station Simulator: Early Days so mesmorising. In this game, you’ve just bought a stretch of land in the middle of an American desert with an old, derelict gas station. Fortunately, a rich, mysterious relative of yours—only known as the “Uncle”—is happy to loan you some funds so you can run your own gas station.

There are plenty to keep you busy here—you have to handle every single aspect of running a gas station, from clearing out the trash to removing the sand dunes around the station—but this, surprisingly, comes with none of the anxieties from managing a small business. You can close the station for a bit, and then spend the next hours clearing up the astronomical amount of trash around the area. You can outfit your station with decorations, or give it a fresh coat of paint. You can even play a racing mini-game and drive a remote-controlled car around an obstacle course—and post your score on a leaderboard online. Unlike real life, you can almost immediately reap the fruits of your hard labour, which makes setting up your own gas station such a therapeutic endeavour. 

But for all its features, Gas Station Simulator: Early Days is predominantly a free demo to the actual game itself, which will probably see a full launch this year. Meanwhile, you can grease up and earn as much money as you can from Early Days, although there’s still a limit to how much you can earn or do in that space. The dusty environments in and around the station are lovingly and intricately rendered, and there are a couple more features I can’t wait to see realised in the full version. Take for instance a landing zone I’ve came across while exploring the vicinity around the station—one that’s made specifically for UFOs—and I’m immediately intrigued by the possibilities of fuelling up spaceships for aliens.