In the aftermath of Stardew Valley‘s success and popularity, there have been many attempts by other developers to carve their own piece of the pixel farm life simulator pie. Whereas those games so often put you in the role of a poor farmer or some other position of struggle, Discounty does the opposite, having you effectively play as the bad guys in Stardew Valley: the outsider that has everything and is trying to weasel into the community. You’re not literally playing a mirror of that game’s story, but it’s awfully close–instead of being the new farmer in a small, struggling town, you’re instead the new owner of the big-brand supermarket that’s attempting to monopolize the economy and push out existing vendors to increase your profit margins. It altogether makes for a game that is fun to play (in that hypnotic sort of way that’s recognizable in so many games that romanticize retail work), but it is ultimately narratively quite uncomfortable at times and too muddled in its storytelling to utilize that discomfort to deliver a compelling message.
Granted, you’re merely the pawn in the palm of the hand of a much greedier capitalist: your aunt. Roped into moving to her small harbor town of Blomkest to help out with her struggling market, you arrive to find she’s sold out to the Discounty chain and rebranded. Your aunt is immediately portrayed as a suspicious person, keeping secrets locked away in sheds, making backroom deals with banks, and firing employees without a second thought. It’s all in the name of expanding her supermarket business empire, and you’re her most loyal pawn, charming locals into going along with your expansions and acquiring their wares so that citizens have to go to Discounty to buy food and home supplies.
It feels scummy, especially since your character has zero backbone, pushing the buck on responsibility and ignoring the consequences of their actions for a big chunk of the game’s story, which primarily deals with a hurting community that needs healing.
Discounty comes very close to tackling this story in a nuanced and measured way. An unfair and demanding boss puts you immediately on the backfoot, creating the implication that you’re powerless. And as the sole employee for most of the story, you have to handle all of the store’s responsibilities solo for six days a week, eight hours a day. That leaves you precious little free time to actually go out and talk to people and try to help them with their problems. At face value, it appears as if Discounty is presenting the viewpoint of an overworked and underpaid retail worker not having the bandwidth to address societal problems–a fairly accurate reflection of a lot of people in real life day-to-day. It’s hard to dismantle the machine when you’re an unwilling cog caught up in its design.
The protagonist isn’t characterized that way though; instead, they’re propped up as the savior that Blomkest’s economy needs. You decide the fate of these people, and you willingly go against their wants in the name of capitalism. The story tries to make you feel bad about this a few times (which in itself is annoying, as there’s no choice to not make the decisions that you’re being condemned for), with citizens coming into your store and expressing their displeasure at your prices, monopolization of the economy, and willingness to destroy existing infrastructure and town history in the name of expanding the size of your store. But they immediately forgive you and go back to regularly shopping with you the very next day, draining any sort of narrative consequence from your actions.
So often, Discounty feels like it’s on the verge of making a point about this–the game almost delves into the subject of how, in the grand scheme of things, we bemoan large corporations and big-name brands but then are all too quick to rely on them. But it’s so muddled by the game’s insistence to constantly divert attention away from this subject matter. It wants to be a “cozy” game, and dealing with nuanced issues that make you think aren’t cozy. Pretty much every story beat is shuffled under the rug as soon as it’s brought up, creating spikes in tone that ricochet between outlandish silliness and discomforting reality, and don’t allow space for the player to sit with any of what they learned because there are shelves to stock. Discounty has a barebones narrative framework that leaves you wanting for an answer that the story feels ill-equipped to give because it accidentally stumbled into asking the question.
These hang-ups with the story aside, the moment-to-moment gameplay of Discounty is pretty fun. Most of it sees you frantically running around your own store to keep shelves stocked or take payment at the cash register. As your business grows, new challenges arise. Customers can track in dirt that you need to take time to clean, for example, and as your stock grows, finding enough space for all your shelving can prove a challenging puzzle. But finding solutions to these problems in the constant drive to push efficiency and customer satisfaction are regularly rewarding. With each shift, you’ll notice shortcomings you can shore up or places where you can improve, and with careful consideration (and the profits you earn), you can put your plans into action.
Need more customers coming in to buy the surplus of cabbage you accidentally ordered? Buy an eye-catching prop that will compel more people to add cabbage to their grocery lists and print out some flyers to plaster around town to drive up the number of people who visit in the coming week. Discover that dirt keeps piling up next to the milk? Shift your shelves around so that there are two avenues to reach your milk section, lessening the traffic through the formerly singular lane, and then move the cleaning supplies next to the milk section so you can easily grab them. Struggling to add up customer’s large orders even with the built in calculator and stressing about how often people complain about the speed of service? Invest in a scanner that cuts out the need to add up the individual price of each item.
As Discounty’s story continues, you’ll unlock more challenges, like daily and weekly quotas that net you a bonus currency to unlock new items to stock the store with. You’ll have story-driven milestones to accomplish the likes of raising a huge sum to afford another expansion or finding a way to make a deal with several suppliers to grow your business. The chase to achieve these goals becomes the driving force in Discounty, and even if the narrative payoff for these tasks is hit-or-miss each time, the sensation of hitting another milestone and checking off a job on your to-do list is regularly fulfilling. Discounty grades your performance each day as well, so the act of simply streamlining your business to make it even more productive than it was the day before is gratifying too and creates smaller milestones that you can pursue between the larger goals that typically take several in-game weeks to work toward.
When you’re not working in the store, you’re free to explore the town and talk to its various citizens. Each has a memorable personality and design, setting a high standard on first meeting that the game doesn’t always meet in subsequent interactions. Outside of specific story beats, each citizen only has a handful of things to say, so speaking to them three or four times can exhaust all their dialogue and cause them to start repeating earlier conversations. This can get annoying, especially with the citizens that you have to speak to dozens of times because they’re shop vendors that you buy furniture from or suppliers that you obtain special goods from–clicking through the same dialogue chains over and over becomes grating quickly.
Talking to the other characters can push forward other plot points too, including a few that center around mysterious happenings that plague the town. Why are the woods closed and covered in a strange purple mist? What’s up with the huge population of rats congregating in random parts around town? What is your aunt keeping in the locked shed and why does she keep saying that you don’t have to worry about it? These mysteries are largely character-driven, and the reward for your sleuthing is learning more about the denizens that call Blomkest their home. They aren’t all that challenging to puzzle through, with the clue needed to proceed usually falling into your lap just by putting time into the store. But they’re all fun distractions and get you more involved with the colorful cast of characters, making solving each mystery far more worthwhile than just going up to people and trying to talk to them normally.
With some caveats, I’d recommend Discounty. The story will make you regularly feel like you’re the bad guy in all this, and technically you are even if it’s no fault of your own. But it’s easy to ignore the riffraff and the trouble you’re causing your fellow citizens in your constant pursuit of bringing a factory-level of efficiency to your growing supermarket, and driving up profits for the sole purpose of buying upgrades that will let you drive profits even further. Maybe Stardew Valley’s JojaMart had the right idea after all.
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