RIP THEM OFF

DEVELOPER Lozange Labs PRICE $13 AVAILABILITY Released WEBSITE https://www.rip-them-off.com/

Do you remember Swim Out, the stylish puzzle game that cast the pool against you? My perception was that it was popular, but perhaps it wasn’t. Looking now, it only has tens of reviews on Steam and a few hundred on mobile, despite being positively reviewed by a lot of games sites. When I saw Rip Them Off, also by Lozange Labs, I was excited to try it out. Although it has been released for more than six months, it seems to have generated even less chatter from players. It’s a very clever game, though. I’m excited to tell you about it.

As well as Rip Them Off’s low count of Steam reviews, most people aren’t unlocking even the most basic of Steam achievements. I wonder if this is due to initial instruction being incredibly obtuse. There are a lot of pieces to the game and hardly any are (even slightly) explained. I nearly gave up on the second tutorial level. I watched a lone YouTuber fail it as many times as I had, similarly confused. Then, I found a guide the developers have published on Steam, which possibly should have been included in the game, to explain aspects of the UI, and it helped a lot.

I’ve now completed more than half of the game and I love it. It’s all about observation and feel. In fact, I think that a very explicit tutorial would have ruined my (eventual) understanding of how things work. I can open a new level, look at every piece carefully and make decisions that are nearly good enough, then tweak them until they are. Each time I try, I gain more insight. Where are shoppers coming from? How fast are they walking? Which shops have enough capacity and a

fast enough turnover to meet demand in any given location? What can I build now and upgrade later?

The developers describe their (curiously unique) gameplay as, “a puzzle game of economic management and tower defence”. It’s also kind of a rhythm game. And, the Mini Metro of shopping sims, being minimalist and abstract. I particularly loved the moment when I realised I could slow shoppers down by placing a “high capacity, slow exit” shop in front of another “slow exit, low capacity” shop. And that (occasionally) doubling “slow exit” shops is effective, too. Shoppers will walk past if a shop is full to capacity, or if they’re offered a shape they already have.

It’s remarkably simple, conceptually, but as you progress through levels, the complexity gets intense. As well as managing speed, shops cost different sums to build and shoppers will pay varying amounts for different shapes. Some shops will sell to multiple routes and the action will play out over increasingly more stages, or days.

I can’t imagine how difficult it must have been to balance Rip Them Off so that it made any kind of sense. The art is engaging and it has been reviewed positively by the press. I think the challenge may be getting players to buy into the obscurity of its abstraction, at least long enough to get a feel for how it works. I’ve deliberately tried not to be too explicit in describing the game because learning to understand it is the entire point. Treat these people as if they were a rhythmic stream of wallets to be systematically emptied, as efficiently as possible, and you’ll get it eventually.