Analysis of Uncle Chop's Rocket Shop

A Roguelite with space mechanics is coming to XBOX. In Uncle Chop's Rocket Shop You must follow the instructions if you don't want to die.

My relationship with mechanics is based on the fact that my car does something it shouldn't do, I take it to the garage and I exercise my blind trust that the professional is honest, knows what he is doing and that the price is right. In Uncle Chop's Rocket Shop we play Wilbur, fox with a man's body… or the other way arounda new employee of the franchise who knows, doesn't know what he's doing, but at least he doesn't get killed.

We load the dead to Wilbur

The dead man he carries is that of his predecessor. Upon being hired, Wilbur must take the corpse of the former workshop director and put it in a capsule to launch it into space. But first we must pry a book from his cold, dead hands: the grimoire. A bible of intergalactic mechanics, our reference manual for carrying out our work. Through its pages we learn the different areas of the ship with their systems, breakdowns and repair methods until the end of the third day, Chop arrives and asks us for the rental.

Uncle Chop's Rocket Shop is the brand of a megacorporation run by Good Uncle Chop, a pig who manifests as a giant hologram and asks you for your rent every three days. Do we have it? Well, we still have 3 days, even if the rent goes up. We don't have it? As he kindly tells you, “you don’t need to get your stuff back.” No, space capitalism considers that the death of the employee is a good way to dismiss him. Laser beams, tentacles, fire… Human Resources are very imaginative when they want to be.

Loop with Wilbur.

A lot of deaths for a mechanic workshop, right? This is where the game takes place. Roguelite since our guide throughout this journey, a… human who serves breakfast, decides that we can return to the loop after each gruesome death. The system is very imaginative. Uncle Chop's Rocket Shopgiven that It's not about combat but about management and know-how. It includes a permanent progression part which focuses on improving the quality of life (more time, more patient clients, etc.) and an evolution stake which resets every time Run. Here I find a small bump in progression, as each upgrade purchased usually takes a day to arrive, out of three where you have to pay the rent. This means that there are elements that cannot be repaired, losing the corresponding money, because if you do not repair it, the money will be taken away from you (this is the market space, my friend) . For this there is a period of trial and error in my opinion very high in the first hours of play, repeating several times in the first 3 days.

The aliens arriving at you and their ships are procedurally generated, each with their own beliefs, factions, and, of course, mechanical issues. But the first 3 days, being more guided, are the same in its fundamental features. So until you master the Grimoire (all of which is impossible), the parts and the tools, you will repeat these first three phases a lot. Not to mention the controls.

Where are your hands, Wilbur?

Let's talk about controls. Uncle Chop's Rocket Shop it's a game designed for computer. Using the mouse seems perfect for puzzles what repairs to each ship entail. By passing this control to command, the immediacy of point and clickby designing a system that automatically targets interactable parts.

This sounds good, but there are a lot of parts and the system isn't precise, so getting to the part we want can be a hassle and a waste of time (and we're not here to waste time). At this we are joined by a quite complicated button system which cannot be personalized. a perfect combination that doesn't go very well with consulting the Grimoire at each step, like Ikea instructions. The workday goes by quickly, yes.

Slow Wilbur.

Chop asks you for your rent every 3 days and you have to get it. Each work day, Wilbur arrives and if everything goes well, he reviews his requests and chooses his client. In normal mode, the working day is 8 hours (look, at least it's okay). This translates to 8 minutes a day (it's not so good anymore). During this time you need to locate the problem, if you don't know how to solve it, look it up in the Grimoire (searching for the corresponding section and appendix), figure it out, buy the broken parts and repair it that's happening. … If you have to look at the instructions, I will tell you that you are only going to repair one ship per day. and with that, the money doesn't come, and things become more and more complicated.

There is a more relaxed way where time ceases to exist and the limitation is to repair 3 ships per day. The rewards are more modest but I find that being able to learn each mini-game well to repair the vents, the toilets or the bullshit machine is necessary to be able to go into frenzy mode (the normal mode). a good roguelite This doesn't make things easy for you, but if you don't feel like you're moving forward, you run the risk of giving up. The Grimoire must be studiedr, and here is the real progress in the first stages, how in death you learned to solve another new problem with the ship. Because each part of the ship has its own solution, some purely mechanical like tightening nuts or replacing fluids and others more bizarre like entering an AI or skipping a platforming phase. Everything is in the grimoire, which can also be downloaded from the official pagevery useful to have it on the tablet next to you.

Wilbur's World.

Uncle Chop's Rocket Shop It's a game with a very particular (black) humordrinking in Rick and Morty with a design very similar to the one drawn by Pendleton Neighborhoodpresents very interesting characters who force us at some point to make decisions that will have consequences in the end. Everyone, even the cat, plays their role in Wilbur's life. Because apart from work stress, even if you can't get away from the work area, there are secrets and other stories to explore, expanding the world in a fun and interesting way. Very often, liberalism doesn't let you see the forest.

Conclusions.

An approach to Roguelite quite original with a friendly and fun design. In its normal mode, there is stress which could be part of the game if it did not increase with the command control problem. Trying to play it with a keyboard it seems to improve, but the console version doesn't accept it well and the buttons have broken down. Hopefully they fix these issues, because Studying mechanics has never been so fun. If they didn't kill you, great, but you learn from your mistakes. What's the worst that could happen? That the ship gets stuck in infinite space?