With roguelikes having grown in popularity over the past decade, it’s brought about a renaissance of sorts, ushering in a new wave of games that borrow elements from the classics while also experimenting with the genre’s foundational elements. For every turn-based, randomly generated dungeon crawler on the market, you’re just as likely to find a roguelike that’s centered around deck-building, managing a city, or even playing golf. 

For their second game, developer Beard Envy is making its mark on the genre with Uncle Chop’s Rocket Shop, a spaceship repair sim that mashes together the crushing, never-ending cycle of American capitalism and spaceship repair. It’s a brow-raising premise, to say the least, and the core loop is perfectly summed up on the game’s store page: “Wake up, clock in, fix ships, pay R.E.N.T., upgrade your workshop, ponder the futility of your existence, go to bed and then do it all over again the next day.” 

The pressures of a 9-to-5 job are by no means new in the world of video games, although Uncle Chop’s Rocket Shop sets the stage early on and in a rather grim fashion. If you fail to pay your rent in the allotted time period, your life is swiftly and unceremoniously cut short by the eponymous Uncle Chop, who’s ostensibly the frontrunner for 2024’s “Most Unforgiving Landlord” award. 

The game’s narrative and tone have, understandably, garnered a lot of attention leading up to its release, but what’s surprising is that it wasn’t on the developers’ minds from the onset. 

“It was never the plan from the start,” explains programmer and 3D artist Ben Webster. “When we first started working on this, the only thing we had a sort of idea on was the game loop. We wanted a self-contained game loop that we [could] very easily iterate on and add more to, which is where the spaceship repair came from. The world and the story just sort of gradually sprouted from that.” 

You won’t need a degree in rocket science to actually fix your customers’ broken-down spaceships, but the game's unique take on the repair process brings with it an equal mix of satisfaction and challenge. It’s not uncommon to find yourself spending a good chunk of your first few work days poring over your trusty Grimoire, which provides a crash course in everything from changing a ship’s oil to fixing a broken Star Map or Tomfoolery Module. Thankfully, for all the alien technology you’re tasked with learning about, there are plenty of familiar tools at your disposal, and even something as simple as turning a screwdriver or ratchet feels immediately satisfying. 

The emphasis on employing tactile mechanics and interpreting instructional manuals has been the core focus for much of the development cycle, having been shaped and inspired by games the team has enjoyed playing in their spare time. 

“For the sort of hands-on gameplay, I think the two biggest ones are Papers, Please and Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes. They’ve definitely been on our minds in terms of clicking and interacting with fun things,” explains Webster. “I guess the instructions and deciphering have moved a bit away from that, as we’ve gone more towards image-based instructions. But the core loop started from there.” 

Much like the games that inspired it, Uncle Chop’s Rocket Shop does demand a certain level of concentration and skill, but there are also a few ways to tweak the experience to your preferred play style. Aside from the meta-progression—which comes in the form of permanent upgrades you can purchase from a demonic jukebox in your basement—there’s also the option to enable a timer-less mode. While it does remove the daily time limit for completing repair jobs, it also ratchets up their complexity, with greater financial penalties should you slip up. 

The decision to include two different modes came through public playtests, where it quickly became clear that while players were enjoying the core gameplay loop, some didn’t enjoy the feeling of seeing a timer tick down as they rushed to decipher repair manuals. 

“We had a discussion amongst ourselves on what's important about the game,” Webster explains, “because our last game was a puzzle game, and it was hard as nails, maybe at times to its detriment, I'm not sure. We sort of just sort of came together and asked ourselves, ‘What’s the value like?’ ‘What are the core principles of the game?’ And I think we sort of landed on it being more important that we wanted as many people to engage with it. So we spent some time seeing how we could retool our current setup so all of the difficulties still remained, and instead just eliminate this one thing.”

Beard Envy’s resident 3D artist, Joe Ward, says the goal was not to necessarily make an easier version of the game—the aforementioned jukebox takes care of that—but rather one that offers a different play experience. 

“It's not to say that the untimed mode is the casual way to play,” explains Ward. “It's still hard and requires you to really engage with all the systems in the game. It just lets you engage with them in a different kind of way.” 

With Uncle Chop’s Rocket Shop release date around the corner, the team is eager to have players give it a go for themselves, offering some parting words of encouragement. 

“It’s a trial-and-error game, for sure,” assures 2D artist Aaron Coker. “And yeah, don’t get frustrated. It’s all part of the journey. The game will lead your hand through that with the narrative as well. Every time you die, even if it was a silly death, you’ll get some story and narrative. It’s all part of the experience.” 

Uncle Chop’s Rocket Shop will be available on the Epic Games Store in November.