$14.99Roadside Research Run a gas station, study the customers
Run a gas station on Earth as an undercover alien. Stock shelves, refuel cars and serve customers by day, then scan, steal and experiment on those same customers for your research. Keep the suspicion meter low or government agents come knocking. Solo or with up to three friends, it is a shop sim with a silly streak.
Is Roadside Research worth it?
Roadside Research is worth it if…
- you like shop and gas station sims but want a joke running through the whole shift
- you want a low-pressure management game where failure means goo, not game over
- you have a friend or three to split the chores and cause chaos with
- you enjoy first-person tasks: scanning items, pumping fuel, tidying up
- you like silly sci-fi more than serious simulation
Screenshots
The day shift at a very normal gas station
By daylight, you are an ordinary employee of an ordinary roadside station. That means restocking shelves with the right items, ordering wares for the shop, refueling passing cars and trading goods for cash. People depend on you, so a customer who wanted snacks and fuel should leave with both. There is cleaning to do too, because a tidy station keeps humans happy and nobody suspicious. The work is calm and repetitive in the good way: one car pulls in, you fill the tank, ring up the sale, and the next one arrives. It feels like a proper shop sim, just with a slightly odd employee behind the counter.
The research no one asked for
The station is a cover. Your real job is studying humans without them noticing. Scan customers as they browse, steal things they leave behind, and test various methods on the ones who stop by. Every bit of data feeds your mission. Just watch the suspicion meter, because push it too high and government officials pay the station a visit.
Hands-on shop work, done at your pace
If you like first-person job sims, this is one with a twist: the till, the shelves and the fuel pumps are all yours, and nothing rushes you. You stock items one by one, cook food for travelers, clean up after them and serve whoever drives in. The music stays calm and the tone stays light, so a shift feels like something to unwind with rather than a test. One honest note: later on, unloading delivery trucks and restocking becomes a big chunk of the loop, which some find tedious. Come for the early shifts and the alien nonsense more than endless shelf-filling.
Two upgrade trees, one budget
One of you pumps fuel while another rings up sales, a third restocks and a fourth sneaks off to scan a customer, all while everyone tries to look human. The wobbly first-person arms and the cardboard-thin disguises make the mayhem funnier: coordination falls apart, shelves end up half-stocked, and somehow the shift still works out. Solo is playable too, though the chores add up faster when there is no one to split them with.
Questions about Roadside Research?
Can you play it solo?
Yes. The game works alone or with up to four players total, and solo play is a calmer, more focused version of the same loop: you handle the shop, the pumps and the secret research yourself, planning upgrades during closing hours. Fair warning from the community: chores like restocking pile up faster alone, so the game shines brightest with company.
Is it actually funny or just alien-themed?
The comedy is the core, not a coat of paint. You draw your own human face on a disguise, the written descriptions are packed with absurd little details, and the physics of your fake human arms getting snagged on everything does a lot of the joking for you. The humor runs through the dialogue, the items and the situations, and it is the kind of silliness that lands even better with friends.
