IIf you're challenged to design a game set in a supermarket, you might settle for a shelf stacking puzzle game in which you place Tetris-shaped products into appropriately sized spaces. Or, perhaps, like on the game show, a timed race through the aisles in which you must collect the highest value cart. However, it is unlikely that you will be able to Supermarket opening hoursa surreal point-and-click adventure with the hand-drawn aesthetic of a 10-year-old's felt-tip art project and a sense of humor drawn from Young people (the supermarket toilet paper is branded Cloud Arse).
There are few points of comparison with this, the second art school dropout game behind the indie studio Rabbit hole games. You explore the different areas of the supermarket – the freezer section; the mobile telephony space, with a dynamic and overly competent salesperson; the cigarette stand; the recycling area; abandoned bathrooms – interact with staff and customers. You're free to fill your cart with whatever pleases you, while listening to the observations of two omniscient commentators whose remarks include surprisingly informative descriptions of mushrooms and tongue-in-cheek interpretations of expensive fruit juices.
As you complete the sitemap, you also encounter various bizarre mini-games. In one, for example, you choose how fast you slap a side of meat hanging in the butcher's shop, while the narrator emits obscene and off-putting barks of encouragement.
There are also objectives: hit a passing seagull with a stone; find a way to open a stuck pickle jar; buying alcohol for teenagers loitering outside; recycle the discarded bottles and cans littering the first floor. By solving these puzzles, you arrive at a greater resolution, once the supermarket has revealed its hidden depths and secret dimensions. Can you find a way to appease the goblin living in the freezer? Can you exorcise haunted toilets? It's a delightfully silly journey and a rare example of a truly iconoclastic video game emerging from a sea of derivative products.
