[PREVIEW] Before Exit: Gas Station – Are You Sure You’re Alone?

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Before Exit: Gas Station is the spiritual successor to Before Exit: Supermarket, evolving the franchise’s unique blend of the job simulator and anomaly-detection horror genres. The game casts you as a night-shift employee at a remote, isolated gas station who must follow a checklist of closing tasks while navigating an escalating sense of dread and subtle paranormal occurrences.

Task Management Meets Tense Observation

The core gameplay loop is a highly interactive, first-person task management simulator. Your main goal is to complete a set of daily assignments before you can exit the gas station and go home. Specifically, these tasks are highly realistic for a closing shift. They include restocking, organizing shelves, removing fresh bakery items, and handling late customers.

Furthermore, you must mop floors and be sure the toilet lids are closed. The gas station setting also includes a workshop. Therefore, you must close the garage doors, put the things back into their place, lower down the cars, stop the fire and check if the ice box is open or not. In any case, all of these tasks are therapeutic and feel sensible. Finally, unlike the previous game, you can now walk outside to clear the trash and shoo away lingering customers.

The complexity comes from the game’s anomaly-detection mechanic, which is the source of the horror. The game is effectively a “roguelike” shop simulator where the assignments change daily, and new, additional tasks are often thrown in “blind”. The real challenge is realizing what is missing or out of place. If you miss even a single item on the invisible list of required closing procedures, your very observant and “very strict” boss will appear to warn or even fire you (forcing a restart from day one).

Realistic Graphics Interwined With Mundane Tasks

Before Exit: Gas Station uses a realistic visual style to create a detailed, accurate service station. However, unlike the slightly “cartoonish tone” of the previous game, this atmosphere is now eerie and mysterious. Therefore, the graphics and sound work together to build a slow, immersive tension. The setting itself, a gas station in the middle of nowhere late at night is already unsettling. While the environment is detailed for cleaning and interaction, the oppressive quiet and feeling that “something’s watching” turns this ordinary place into something scary.

Besides taht, you are constantly in wonder: “Did I miss something?” Every closed door, every restocked shelf, and every cleaned stain must be double-checked. Because of this, the game makes you paranoid about missing any tiny speck of dirt, since not achieving “perfection” leads to you getting fired. Furthermore, the routine, mundane tasks are what make the subtle anomalies so effective. When the setting is so normal, a slight change is noticeable.

In the end, the main joy is the deep satisfaction of finishing the checklist perfectly. Walking out the door without facing the terrifying boss is a huge relief and a genuine success. Personally, I can’t wait for the full release of this game. it’s just so much fun and simple and it occupies your time really well.