Uncle Chops Rocket Shop is a game that will make you sweat. It applies a type of pressure I’ve rarely encountered in a video game. Other games will challenge your reflexes, your ability to adapt, and even your ability to think strategically. Uncle Chops Rocket Shop, however, challenges your ability to learn, and apply that learning in various scenarios under the threat of death.
You play as a cute four-eyed fox man working as a rocket ship mechanic. Your boss, Uncle Chop, charges you ever-increasing rent and will straight up murder you if you fail to pay. You have 8 minutes each day to complete as many repair jobs as you can in order to make enough money to save your life.
You can find a video version of this review on YouTube!
8 minutes is not a lot of time, even less so when you also have to learn how to fix the problems you encounter under that same time constraint. Fear not, however, because death is not the end. Wilbur, the intrepid fox-man is also chained to a variable loop in time. Every death simply resets him back to his first day on the job. You can’t escape the capitalistic grind, even in death.
Uncle Chops Rocket Shop is an incredibly unique game and one that presents you with a fairly simple concept of tinkering with various mini-game-like tasks. But the depth and complexity that sits behind those interactions completely separates Uncle Chops Rocket Shop from the standard video game masses.
Over the last few years, I’ve played several very popular games that would quite literally tell you the solution to a game’s puzzles within seconds of encountering them. Uncle Chops Rocket Shop hands you a manual full of instructions and blueprints and tells you to figure it the hell out or die. That alone is incredibly refreshing.
| Gideon’s Bias | Uncle Chops Rocket Shop Information |
|---|---|
| Review Copy Used: Yes | Publisher: Kasedo Games |
| Hours Played: 27+ | Type: Full Game |
| Reviewed On: PC | Platforms: PC, Xbox Series, PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch |
| Fan of Genre: Yes | Genre: Rogue-lie Simulation |
| Mode Played: Mostly Frantic | Price: $19.99 |
A Wrenching Good Time
I used to be a mechanic, not the car kind, but the type that had to disassemble and reassemble machinery from poorly printed blueprints that looked to be written by a toddler amid an earthquake. The diagrams are a lot more clear in Uncle Chops Rocket Shop, but I was impressed at just how familiar it all felt.
The various tasks you take on are fictionalized but are still problems that actually require you to study the manual in order to figure them out. Each potential repair has to be diagnosed, and fixed. The same repair job can have several variations, and you have to figure out and solve the problem each time. The book teaches you what you’re actually looking at, and how to diagnose various problems. But you have to take that knowledge and apply it as quickly as you can.
For example, changing oil is simple enough. You simply fill a container with oil and pump the correct amount into the oil pan. Easy Right? But what if the oil is dirty? You need to drain out the existing oil, pump in some cleaner, drain the cleaner out then fill it with fresh oil.
If it’s hot, however, it will bust your containers, so you need to decompress the heat first. But oh no, the heatsinks broke, you have to replace it. After that, assuming the pump is working, you can then change the oil. Don’t forget to pull the cover down and retighten the screws afterward! You get fined for every screw-up, including leaving things open.
The Oil System is just one of many modules you have to learn your way around. The whole thing feels fun to control as you pull levers, flick switches, push buttons, and wiggle your mouse back and forth to loosen and tighten bolts. You have to learn how to program AIs, fix breathing systems, clean toilets, and that’s just the benign stuff.
Some jobs can kill you outright if you screw up. If you cut the wrong wire on a ticking time bomb, you die. Take too long to stop a reactor from melting down, and you die. Piss off Uncle Chop in one of the boss battle jobs, you die. Take a job from a sketchy person that your manual specifically tells you not to do, but you didn’t pay attention because reading is for nerds? You die.
Even when you’re not in immediate danger, the ticking clock is always a factor. The more jobs you can do in a day, the more money you make, and you need money to pay rent, or you die. At the same time, you also need money to buy upgrades and new machines for the shop in order to tackle harder jobs or make things more efficient.
Efficiency is the real key to the game. You not only have to learn how these modules function and how to fix them, but how to do it fast. It’s a gameplay loop unlike any other I’ve seen. Hardspace Shipbreaker, one of my favorite games, is the closest I can compare it to, but even then the mechanisms in Uncle Chops Rocket Shop are far more complex. Reading and referencing the manual is not just recommended, it’s mandatory.
Odd Jobs
Uncle Chops Rocket Shop hides a lot beneath the surface. There are a bunch of secrets and side quests, and while many of them appear to be just that, most of them end up being a whole lot more. For example, there are various factions in the game, and many secrets or side quests can lead you to join one of these factions intentionally, or accidentally.
The thing is, once you join a faction, your gameplay for that run changes, dramatically. You are pulled out of your dinky little rocket shop and thrust into a whole new set of subsystems, and their own manual for you to learn them. I won’t spoil everything, but you could do a straight rocket mechanic playthrough of the game and still have tons to learn and discover via the factions. From running a donut shop, complete with all the machinery that goes into making them, to manning the systems and weapons of a spaceship in battle.
Each of these faction questlines has a ton of complex nuance to running the machinery for that faction. Discovering and setting up a faction-based run is a minigame of its own, as they each have specific criteria you need to follow and complete in order to join them, all while keeping yourself alive at your Rocket Shop in the meantime.
It’s incredibly clever and it really knocked my socks off when I completed what I thought were little side objectives only to find that they were complete deviations from the game’s storyline and gameplay loop. It really makes the thought of solving the games’ secrets and being experimental with the games’ mechanisms exciting, because who knows what you will find?
Looping Crunch
As you loop, you start from scratch on day one. Anything you bought with money is lost, as are any items you may have had. However, you earn Omens from some of the harder jobs, and these can be spent on permanent upgrades that persist between loops. They can be simple things, like making you run faster, or more substantial boons, such as always starting a run with electrical tools.
Some events are static, you will always encounter bosses on certain days for example. But your jobs are variable, you never know what you’re going to face. The thing is, the game is very brutal and merciless, and this is mostly a good thing. It’s unapologetic in its design, and it demands that you learn its systems to progress. But, if you’re bad at the game, like I am. You’re gonna run into some friction.
I’ll come clean now. There are multiple endings to the game, and I haven’t seen any of them, I haven’t completed a run, yet. I’m on the spectrum, and I can’t always learn the way that other folks can. For example, I can’t read the manual ahead of time and remember any of it, what I’m reading about has to be in front of me, which is fine. But I also had to contend with the time limit, so learning it all on the job often had consequences that led to my failure.
I failed a lot. I was stuck on the second boss battle for ages. And I looped so many times that the early game started to become very, very repetitive. While the jobs are variable, their complexity is not. The jobs you face in the early game are less complicated than late game. It got to the point that I could breeze through the first few days almost by muscle memory.
Some static events are horribly painful when you loop that many times. For example, day 2 always begins with a crashed burning ship, and I’ve put out its fires so many times that I never want to see it again. I desperately wish the early days of a run were more varied.
However, because I failed for so long, the game also became somewhat more magical once I succeeded, not just because I succeeded, which always feels great in Uncle Chops Rocket Shop. But because of what came after.
The game didn’t only throw new jobs at me to learn, it changed the ones I had grown accustomed to, and I didn’t even notice at first. One of the first things I had to fix after the second boss battle, was a fuel system.
A completely routine fix, one of the simplest jobs in the game, my muscle memory kicked in, and I moved my mouse to grab the switch that releases the fuel canisters and pull it down. Except, I missed the switch, and I missed it a second time. The third time I missed my focus returned, and I noticed I was missing the switch because there was no switch at all! It simply wasn’t there!
I panicked. I had fixed countless fuel systems before, and now I was flailing around like I had just started playing five seconds ago. The switch needed replacing, but I had never had to do that before, and I didn’t know how!
I eventually figured it out, but I was way too slow, and it ended up costing me the run. But I was invigorated. It took my routine, something I had mastered, and turned my complacency around on me. It was exhilarating like the game was new and fresh again.
After that point, all your jobs become more complex, even the ones you thought you knew, and while it doesn’t erase the early game repetition, the progressive step-up feels fantastic.
Frantic vs Focused Mode
Uncle Chops Rocket Shop has two modes, and you can switch between them from run to run. Frantic mode is the normal one, and the one I’ve been speaking from for this review. Focused Mode, removes the Time Limit, but limits you to three jobs per day, and the jobs are harder.
So, here’s the thing. I think the existence of the focused mode actually detracts from the game and should probably be removed. Hear me out! The main problem is, that the entire game is centralized around the timer, to the extent that a good chunk of your upgrades don’t function at all without it.
The jobs are technically harder, but without the timer, you can take as long as you need to fix them with no penalty. It essentially makes it a time sink rather than actual gameplay. The whole game becomes very easy, you can make your rent with no effort all while taking all the time you need to learn everything. Learning everything and learning how to apply the things you have learned efficiently IS the game, and you cut that experience off at the knees without the timer.
For the sake of reviewing the game, I tried out focused mode, and halfway through the run, I stopped. I was ruining the game for myself. This isn’t like a standard easy mode, where you can return later and enjoy it on a higher difficulty. Uncle Chops Rocket Shop is a finite experience, despite being a rogue-lite, because once you know everything, you know everything, that’s it. It’s like having the answers to a crossword puzzle.
You might say, “Well just don’t use it”. And I don’t! But its existence isn’t giving players the normal options that a difficulty setting would. It’s giving them a lever they can pull that will in all likelihood, ruin the game for them once they pull it. The temptation to pull it is going to be strong, because Uncle Chops Rocket Shop is going to frustrate you, over and over. I’m not sure the temptation to ruin the experience should be something programmed into the game.
A better solution would have been to have a mode with a much longer and more forgiving timer, rather than to ax it altogether. This is one of the few times where I have to say having an option is a bad thing.
Verdict
Uncle Chops Rocket Shop is going to turn off a lot of folks. The things it wants you to learn and the effort it takes to learn them are going to feel a little bit too much like work or school to some, and that’s okay. For the right audience, however, Uncle Chops Rocket Shop is a challenging toy box of satisfaction, the type of satisfaction that only comes from learning to overcome a challenge, not with reflexes, but with your own cognitive power.
In every loop you get better not just because of the upgrades you obtain, but the real-life knowledge you carry over. You can fix a melting reactor because you learned how to do it, and that feels really good, especially when you learn to diagnose and fix problems quickly, earning more and more money.
The sheer amount of systems at play is truly impressive, when you think you have seen it all, the game will throw new twists your way to keep you on your toes. If you ever want a career change from the Rocket Shop, several faction questlines will change your entire gameplay loop, with whole new subsystems to learn and master.
That said, once you have mastered it all, there won’t be anything left to do, which is somewhat unusual for a rogue-lite game. If you fail often, the early part of a run can get very monotonous, and the game is unforgiving, so you can reset over the slightest mistake. There is a mode that removes the timer, but I’d advise not using it, no matter how tempting it may be, as I believe doing so would largely kill the experience for most people.
I think Uncle Chops Rocket Shop is brilliant, partially because its gameplay loop is indeed satisfying and fun, and tinkering with levers and buttons is simply a joy. However, I also think it’s brilliant because of what it expects from the player.
It doesn’t treat you like you’re stupid by holding your hand and solving the game’s own challenges for you, unlike how many recent popular games have. It gives you the tools you need to figure out its puzzles and has faith that you’re capable of doing it on your own.
And if you can’t, you can’t. There’s no shame in it. But when I fail, the last thing I can imagine my dignity needing is Aloy or Atreus to pop up behind me and tell me how to solve it instead. It’s just nice to see some games still respect me enough not to patronize me.
