Gas Station Story review
I can guarantee one thing: you’ve never encountered a game like this one before. Any comparison to other games that I could draw would be precarious – in fact, Gas Station Story feels more like the blend of a surrealist painting and a dystopian novel shoved inside of a Game Boy Color cartridge than a game.
Working a minimum wage job as a gas station clerk, renting a small apartment and dealing with rude customers may sound quite bland – and a bit too real for some of us – as the premise of a video game, but set the plot in a dystopian future with retro aesthetics and all of a sudden you’ve got yourself an extremely unique, trippy, and enthralling experience.
Gas Station Story opens like a Star Wars movie with scrolling text on top of a space background, setting the plot two centuries into the future, in the middle of tense relationships between races and galaxies. Right away, we are confronted with an intriguing contrast between the grandeur of the sociopolitical narrative and the seeming triviality of your existence as a mere gas station worker. But that is only the first of many contrasts that drive the game. The one I appreciate most is the advanced technology and futuristic themes, expressed through minimalistic retro visuals and sound effects reminiscent of old school systems.
In fact, the very machine you use as a cash register is a spoof of the Game Boy. You’ll spend quite a bit of your time handling your clients’ purchases, but the true heart of the game is actually in the interactions with them. This part – your job and identity as a gas station clerk – I could have done without: you just add up your client’s gas and their purchases, do some math, and move around with your cursor from one button to the next, rinse and repeat a few times. While this component of the gameplay feels dry, it does an excellent job at conveying the protagonist’s psyche and immersing you into the narrative, I understand its importance in the grand scheme of the game.
Mini-games do a great job at punctuating the occasionally repetitive gameplay with fun, varied, and light-hearted (but still consequential!) moments. There are some memory games, some puzzles, some exploration sequences, some turn-based RPG battle spoofs… You’ll never know what to expect! They were always welcome in my playthrough, they never felt heavy or unnecessary. On the contrary, they are very refreshing and sweet between a section of cash register math and a heartfelt conversation with Sam, your co-worker (and love interest?).
The so-called “overworld” – essentially, the various areas where you navigate between the cash register segments, the dialogue segments, and the mini-game segments – will make your nostalgic heart happy. It is reminiscent of those top-down old-school favorites like A Link to the Past and Earthbound. They feel like home, both in the sense of the narrative at play and in the sense of my personal home, in my heart, as a videogame player in my thirties. The world you get to explore somehow feels both very familiar and uniquely different. Gas Station Story offers a modern take on retro aesthetics.
But truly, what sets this game apart and is a true masterpiece, is the characters you meet. Both visually and textually. Sure, the story is quite interesting, and the mini-games are fun, don’t get me wrong, but I kept looking forward to each in-game work day only to meet new characters, come upon their art, and anticipate the decisions I would have to make in the form of dialogue options. And some of the choices are very consequential and will steer you towards one of the 25+ endings. Will you be an exemplary worker even when clients are being abusive or will you stand up for yourself? Will you inquire about an alien’s life or mind your own business? Will you romantically pursue your colleague despite them being in a relationship?
While the game does not seem to bear queer themes at first sight, the protagonist uses they/them pronouns, and the plethora of characters you encounter are incredibly diverse. Any other information beyond that would enter spoiler territory, but let me reassure you and simply say that this game is far from heteronormative! The vibes are very queer in essence.
Gas Station Story boasts hundreds of character portraits made using a Game Boy Camera. Yes, you read that right, the characters (and some other environmental elements and items as well) in the game were all shot through the Game Boy Camera, an accessory released in the nineties that found limited commercial success. That camera creates grayscale photographs that can be edited, and so the developer photographed his surroundings/friends/models, and integrated the resulting artworks into Gas Station Story – also adding a vertiginous layer to the game, wherein the protagonist gets sucked into their own Game Boy-like cash register.
That absolutely blew my mind. It is such a creative and groundbreaking idea that is integrated seamlessly into the sci-fi/cyberpunk retro aesthetics and narrative of the game. For me, the dialogues are the heart of the game, and the character profiles are its heartbeat. You can even purchase the game on Itch as a Game Boy Color rom file!
To me, Gas Station Story is more than a game, it’s a work of art. While the gameplay leaves a bit to be desired, its artistic genius is undeniable. It is a game that one experiences rather than plays. I will find myself thinking about this game for a long time, not because of its fun little games or endearing overworld, but because of its ingenious use of the Game Boy Camera and the brilliant ways in which the visuals and the narrative are interwoven and made into a videogame. Yet it never feels too academic or technical, love emanates from it.
Gas Station Story is truly something special. One playthrough takes about 5 hours, but you may get curious and play it a couple more times to see where the tides will take you if you make other choices…
Gas Station Story was released on June 23, 2025, and can be purchased on Steam and Itch for $14.99.
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