RETAIL IS HELL.
! WARNING !
This game contains a retail work environment.
Player discretion is advised.
Night Of The Consumers, is a 2020 First-Person PlayStation-styled, surprisingly scary game developed by GERMFOOD.
It's your first day on the job and the store is closing in a matter of minutes. The consumers, with their unrelenting thirst for reasonably-priced products and obsequious customer service are still prowling the aisles and there are shelves that are to be stocked up as soon as possible. The store needs to be kept in pristine condition - empty shelves and customer complaints will NOT be tolerated by The Manager.
Welcome to Hell.
The game's first shift is available for purchase and download here
. You can also check out the game's offical trailer here. The game would see an update in April 4, 2023 for the first shift with a promise for more episodes coming soon.
This video game provides examples of:
- Alcoholic Parent: The mother of the baby lectures you how hard it is being a parent and demands you show her 10 bottles of wine.
- Ambiguously Human: The Manager gives off a rather sinister vibe, from how he runs impossibly fast after you, to glowing with an ominous yellow light, and erratic creepy breathing sounds. Also, the way he refers to you, not as a human, but as a specimen, speaks volumes of how alien the guy is.
- ...And 99¢: You're working in a discount store. Whatever Brand X product doesn't go for a pound, is on sale for this.
- Annoying Laugh: The baby's laugh as they escape from their mother is intentionally repetitive, useful in locating them, but gives the impression the toddler's laughing at you and mocking you.
- Anti-Frustration Features: The time limit doesn't start until the first shelf is beginning to be stocked up. Beyond letting you explore the store freely and memorize the placement of the aisles, it also allows the player to plan out a route that circumvents the consumers more effectively, and/or move the boxes closer to where they're intended to be. It also lets you determine where the staff-only rooms are so you have an exit plan of sorts.
- When you're busy handling a consumer's request, until it's done, the other consumers won't try and harass you. They'll still likely get in your way, but at least you're able to focus on your current task before moving on to the next.
- Consumers can take up to three mistakes. This both helps if you accidentally go down a wrong aisle... or, later on and with more requests, if you need to pass down a wrong aisle as the quickest route to the correct one.
- Bad Boss: The Manager is clearly not a pleasant person to be around. You're late for work on your first day, but as you're new he cuts you a little slack, but if any of the Consumers complain or the shelves aren't restocked by the end of the first shift, being fired is the least of your problems.
- Big Head Mode: Available after completing Night 1.
- Boring, but Practical: The most efficient way to play Night 1 as it is is to take all of the boxes and move them each in front of their corresponding shelves before beginning to stock their contents, since the timer doesn't start and the Consumers don't spawn in until you first start stocking. This can take a few minutes to do.
- Closed Circle: Implied. There is no way to leave the building while you're on the job. You can duck into staff rooms for brief respites, but there's an emphasis on the "brief". And if you fail to finish the job in time, the Manager will chain the doors down and hunt you in the darkness.
- Competition Freak: The Manager prides himself on having the best store in town. One complaint or failing to do your job, will send him hunting you down.
- Controllable Helplessness: In a terrifying way if you fail The Manager. He will hunt you down, in the darkness. You can't escape him, and he's chained all the doors shut. Even hiding in the rooms won't help, though, as The Manager will inevitably find the employee.
- Crapsack World: Outside the store in the Silent Hill-like fog lurks the Consumers. The store inside is just absolutely filthy with fecal smears and vomit piles on the floors. Makes you wonder how the hell does it have a 5-star hygiene rating.
- Difficulty by Acceleration: The more you get caught by the Consumers, the less time you have to assist their requests before they go ballistic.
- Dog Food Diet: There's dog food products marketed for cats in this Eldritch Location. note
- Doomed Supermarket Display: The displays of chocolate tubs and toilet rolls go flying in the middle of the Consumer's frenzy.
- Eldritch Location: Downplayed. The store is slightly weird. The products you stock occasionally have very creepy and discouraging subliminal messages and there's a secret compartment in a hollowed-out wall in the stock room holding the skeletal remains of a person, most likely the previous Employee of the Month that went "missing", Lester. On top of this, the consumers are kind of zombie-like.
- Everyone Has Standards: One good thing about the Consumers is, that, unlike in real-life, you won't get badgered whilst in the middle of dealing with another shopper's request. That said, once you've dealt with one belligerent customer, there's nothing to stop you getting hounded by another who is close-by, and again and again. They'll also refrain from following you into the staff-only rooms, but again, nothing's stopping them from hounding you the moment you exit.
- Evil Cripple: A legless consumer on a mobility scooter is disappointed that Lester is nowhere to be seen as they enjoyed annoying him, and decides you'll be just as fun.
- Funny Background Event: When Jimmy escapes the consumers through using the back room, he puke his guts out on the floor, juxtaposed with a sign near his head showing a 5-Star Hygiene rating.
- First-Person Ghost: There's not much to see of the protagonist aside from his hands and arms.
- Game-Breaking Bug: In the current build of the game, it's possible to duplicate boxes by dropping a box, immediately catching it, and then throwing it. If you bring the duplicates to its respective shelf, it will count as complete.
- Hell Is That Noise: The distorted, raspy groans and moans of the Consumers "Excuse me" and "Please help me" are unnerving as it is, especially since they get right up in your face with their face.
- Helpful Mook: As of the 2023 update, the baby runs around the shopping aisles laughing, often colliding into the consumers, knocking them out. This gives you some much needed breathing room to either finish stocking shelves or take care of a consumer's request without being harassed as much.
- His Name Really Is "Barkeep": The Manager's name is literally "The Manager."
- Humans Are Morons: You'll sometimes have Consumers demanding you point them to the product they crave for, when its right in front of them. One irresponsible Consumer in particular keeps losing her baby over and over again, sometimes even a split second after she just made eye contact with you, baby-in-hand! Guess who has to find her infant?
- Humans Are the Real Monsters: The exceedingly rude, self-entitled Consumers care nothing for the consequences of what befalls you if they complain to The Manager. If you can't deal with their requests, as and when they want them, they'll scream to the heavens for him... and you better pray to said heavens when he emerges out of his office with murderous intent.
- Improbable Weapon User: You can toss your supply boxes at the customers to briefly stun them.
- It's All About Me: The restless Consumers are never satisfied with any of their purchases in self-indulgence thus grief you relentlessly.
- Jerkass: When the consumers aren't displaying their lack of brain cells or scaring the living daylights out of you, they're actively trying to get you fired.
- Jump Scare: The way the customers suddenly grab you by hunting you down and getting uncomfortably close to your face. Even worse if you're making a mad dash to point a customer to the product they're looking for only to run smack into another customer trying to get your attention. The manager also pops out of nowhere to kill you if you fail.
- Leaning on the Fourth Wall: Jimmy will tell you to hit the Esc key whenever you need to call up his survival notes, but has no idea what that even means.
- Mundane Horror: A retail job depicted as unsettling and tense as it could possibly be.
- Nightmare Fetishist: The guy in the green shirt is often asking for very disturbing things, from "extra sharp" knives, to murder mystery magazines, to the "goriest video game" in the store, to fake blood. We're hoping that's all there is to his murder fascination.
- Our Zombies Are Different: The Consumers are basically undead legions of the damned with the needs to buy stuff, rather than customers. Crowds gather outside the store banging on the doors, those that get in moan and giggle "puuurchassse" instead of "brains". Also, if they manage to spot you, they'll let out a raspy "Excuse me!" that barely sounds human.
- Outside-the-Box Tactic: No pun intended. In order to complete your shift's Timed Mission with the minimum distraction, you have to get the products to their required aisles before restocking. note
- Perpetual Smiler: Every single character that isn't Jimmy, or you, presumably, to a terrifying extent. The Manager doesn't even break his smile if he fires/kills you.
- Retraux: The aesthetic is very reminiscent of PlayStation 1 games, with its low-poly models and 32-bit textures.
- Please Subscribe to Our Channel: Less a polite request and more of a threatening demand from an athletic consumer who promises to get you fired if you don't subscribe to their channel.
- Replacement Goldfish: It is heavily (and creepily) implied that you are this to the Manager, as his previous star employee, Lester, went missing some time ago. Or did he?
- Safe Zone Hope Spot: The only place the Consumers can't chase after you are Staff-only rooms, but this is a temporary respite as you can't stay there forever with the clock ticking.
- Satire: The whole game is filled with venom for callous managers who only see their employees as a means to an end, obnoxious consumers who heap abuse onto retail workers out of ignorance or even intentional malice, and the idea of having to make a living by dealing with all this BS.
- Scenery Dissonance: The fact that the game takes place in the daytime within a brightly-lit store doesn't do much to detract from the real horror. The daylight definitely doesn't make the closed store (when you fail) any less terrifying, especially considering that you're stuck in there with the murderous Manager.
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Your co-worker Jimmy was supposed to help train you, but unable to cope any longer with the rude Consumers, the copious vomiting and shit stains, abandons ship. It's up to you to man the fort alone.
- Shameless Self-Promotion: Downplayed. On one aisle you can see adverts for one of GERMFOOD's downloadable games "Fleshbirds".
- Shout-Out:
- On the employee's backpack there's a Baldi keychain toy.
- Some of the creepy toys you restock resemble Teletubbies.
- The video games you place in the corresponding aisle are copies of Haunted PS1 Demo Disc 2020, a Game Jam compilation of Retraux horror games.
- The elderly woman might ask for a video game her grandson asked for, which she recalls as "Residence of Evil".*
- The red plastic tubs of confections seen everywhere are a reference to Mars Inc. "Celebrations" chocolates.
- The store sells some sort of ointment/lotion named "Mr. Kravin Miracle Cream". MrKravin lends his voice to the game's characters, and has played this very game on his channel.
- In the first shift update, Jimmy's scribbled piece of paper is replaced with a diary that he has dubbed "Jimmy's Declassified Retail Survival Guide".
- Slasher Smile: Almost every character except Jimmy and Lester has one, but the best example would be the Ambiguously Evil Manager, especially if he kills you.
- Songs in the Key of Panic: The background music gets very intense and stress-inducing when a Consumer catches and is losing patience with you.
- So Proud of You: In a very creepy example, The Manager is impressed by your determination and wants to invite all the managers of all the other stores over to see how much of a hard-worker you are. note
- Stress Vomit: Jimmy is unable to cope with the relentlessly rude Consumers anymore, spewing everywhere in the staff-only corridor before declaring he's at his breaking point and quits.
- Subliminal Advertising: A lot of the products have hidden demotivational messages on them like "you're wasting your life", "you are a loser", "you are wasting away", "you're stuck", "pain" and "get out".
- Take This Job and Shove It: How Jimmy voices that he's quitting working at the store.
- Take That!:
- One of the customer's requests can be seen as one to games trying to copy PT.
"Y'all got any of those PT Clone games?"- The employee doesn't share one of the consumer's enthusiasm for Fortnite, calling it a "stupid game".
- Teacher's Pet: As seen in his unflattering doodles, Jimmy resented Lester for always sucking up to The Manager.
- Timed Mission: From the moment you restock one aisle, you've got to the end of the shift to finish the job and the Consumers will confound and harass you endlessly. If a Consumer catches you, you need to deal with the request quickly or they'll complain to The Manager.
- Uncertain Doom: If that skeleton in the hollowed-out space in the wall really is Lester, your fate in the hands of the Manager is very horrific.
- Ungrateful Bastard: The Consumers never thank you for your service.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: Throughout the game you hear mention of Lester, a worker who previously won The Manager's coveted Employee of the Month award, but he's absent and your boss laments on his disappearance. In one of the storerooms you can repeatedly hit a crumbling wall to expose a prison cell with someone's skeletal remains, chalked over the walls are warnings of 'Don't trust The Manager'.
- Where the Hell Is Springfield?: The location of the store isn't revealed, but with Pound Sterling as the currency, the Brand X Mars Celebrations chocolates, and Germfood actually being from the UK, it's somewhere in Britain.
- Workplace Horror: The customers shuffle like the undead, the store bolts itself shut, and you have to bounce from task to task keeping everything in check. While the customers themselves are mundane, if not incredibly uncanny-looking and hostile, it's the looming threat of displeasing them and summoning The Manager, your otherworldly and kill-happy boss, to take care of you that drives the horror in the game. The Content Warning parodies this by stating the retail experience itself, not the Manager, is where the true horror is.
