Flat Eye turns gas station management into a tech dystopia

digitaltrends.com:

Technology can be a marvelous thing, finding ways to improve our daily lives in ways we never thought possible. It can also be a total nightmare. It’s hard not to feel like we’re quietly slipping into a sci-fi dystopia, where privacy is nonexistent and every aspect of our lives has been commodified.

Flat Eye, the latest game from Night Call developer Monkey Moon Studio, grapples with that tension. The management game has players running a gas station that’s filled with futuristic machines that are one CES away from being breathed into existence. I went hands-on with the game during GDC and found a grounded sci-fi game that resists the urge to crumple into cynical techno-despair — even when it’s presenting a plausible dystopia.

The slice of Flat Eye I played began simple enough. I’m looking top-down at a mostly empty gas station. There’s a register, some shelves, and a restroom. My first day begins simply enough as I refill the shelves with inventory and start ringing up customers.

This isn’t your usual Mobil station, though. The shop has been essentially co-opted by a tech giant that’s turned it into a one-stop-shop for gas, snacks, and cloning. The game loop quickly presents itself as I build new machines and link them up to my power grid, all while juggling my usual clerk duties. Like any good management game, it quickly becomes a complicated juggle where I need to build more machines, keep a fresh stock, repair modules, and check out impatient shoppers at once. A stress meter at the bottom of the screen tells me how well I’m balancing it all.

The fun (or terror) of the whole experience comes from the machines you build. Flat Eye riffs on a number of futuristic ideas, many of which feel dangerously plausible. One of