Roadside Research finally has a demo and it’s every bit as bizarre as I’d hoped

Some games capture our attention as soon as we see that first announcement trailer. They become that thing that we spend our time waiting for, longing for the day that we finally get to play. For me, that game has been Roadside Research. 

Roadside Research is an ultimately bizarre and yet infinitely lovable single-player or online multiplayer game currently in development by Cybernetic Walrus, and when I tell you that I have been absolutely desperate to get my hands on this strange little thrill ride, I am not exaggerating. Now, as of September 15, there’s a demo available, and I leapt at the chance to finally play. 

I also dragged my fiancé along for the experience, and ended up with a tiny tyrant of a manager, but more on that later. 

Blend in, be normal

In Roadside Research, you and your friends (if you’ve brought them along) are aliens who find themselves stranded on Earth and inadvertently in charge of a middle-of-nowhere gas station. You need to blend in with the locals, which is unquestionably helped by the faces drawn on paper and stuck to your brightly colored, balloon-like heads. The customers are either incredibly unobservant or they’ve seen some questionable things in their time. 

From what I’ve been able to gather from my playthrough of the demo, the game works similarly to other shop simulators like Supermarket Simulator. You purchase stock, including food items and fuel, and then sell that stock to make money to buy more stock. However, while there are definite similarities to other games you may have played, the off-the-wall weirdness is where Roadside Research truly shines. 

What on Earth is happening here?

If the shop gets dirty, you need to clean it, obviously, but you do so using a sponge stuck to the bottom of a boot. I’m not entirely sure how sticking it to the bottom of a boot makes it more effective, and honestly would imagine it to be easier not to do that, but apparently that’s just the way these bizarre aliens like to clean. Maybe we should just be relieved that they have an interest in cleaning, or things could get very messy, very fast. 

Mainly thanks to the goop. 

Goop, at least in my mind, is the bodily fluids (make of that what you will) excreted by these aliens at random intervals. You might not even know it’s happened; you’ll just hear a squelching noise, look down, and find yourself standing in a puddle of the green stuff. These aliens lack control over whatever hole this goop apparently comes out of, and I don’t want to think about that too hard. 

Between the gooping, the serving, and the restocking, you need to run around and collect trash dropped by the customers both on the forecourt and inside the store. It doesn’t go in a bin, though. Oh no. This trash is collected and analyzed for DNA, and you use points earned from doing it to buy upgrades from the skill tree. This eventually leads to a little bit of abduction, but these are aliens, so that’s kind of expected.

My child is a tiny alien overlord

I’ll be honest, I didn’t expect this to turn into a family outing when I booted up the game, and my fiancé hopped in to join me. However, some things are far too tempting to a child’s eyes, and, apparently, brightly colored derpy aliens are one of those things. So I let her play, and it all went south from there. 

I didn’t know that I had created a micromanaging monster. 

After she’d run around for a bit and found every single invisible wall that keeps us on the premises, she handed over the reins to me and started to take control. “There’s someone at the checkout!”, “Clean up that mess!”, “We need more cereal!”… The list of demands and orders that were barked out of her angelic face was endless, and worst of all, she was intent on not letting us clean up any of our goop puddles. 

In short, I discovered that in teaching her to be vocal with her wants and needs, I have created an absolute terror, and I profusely apologize to anybody who ever ends up working beneath her. I will try to mitigate my mistake, but in the meantime, I fear that the residents of whatever town these aliens find themselves in are going to discover the truth behind those paper faces. 

Roadside Research is still in development and has no definite release date just yet, but if you’re looking for something hilarious and chaotic to do with your friends, or on your own if you’re feeling like some ‘you time’, I would highly recommend checking out the demo over on Steam.