Uncle Chop’s Rocket Shop – PS5 Review

You’re the lucky new proprietor of the titular Uncle Chop’s Rocket Shop on the planet of Little Mesa. In effect, a space garage where spaceships land in varying levels of decrepitude or disrepair. Though your tenure is wholly dependent on being able to make your rent after three days of work. At the outset, this is two hundred and eighty space bux, a bit like Microsoft Points. Eeh, remember them? You play as Wilbur, a man with a fox’s head. Or perhaps as a fox with a man’s head. Either way, your mute protagonist has to make rent or you’re in trouble. In the default mode, you have eight minutes in real time to repair ships during a working day. A ship lands, you get the job sheet, you carry out the necessary maintenance. You learn on the fly, or at least you would if it was straightforward to do so.

You see, you have to refer to a grimoire AKA the game manual. It’s here that you’ll run into problems. Each ship module has a specific way to troubleshoot and repair where necessary. You can refer to it mid-repair but the clock will keep on inexorably ticking away. Except the navigation of the manual in game is fiddly at best, and outright torturous.

Uncle Chop’s Rocket Shop is the only game we’d recommend that you go to the game website and download the PDF manual for. Heck, the devs; UK based entity Beard Envy; almost expect this outcome as it’s directly available from the front page of the website. At any rate, you can search for text strings on a PC or phone, which is more than can be said for the in-game implementation. Plus you can read up while the game is paused and actually stand a chance of prevailing past the first day. You might even turn a profit.

The simplest modules are fuel and oil. The former you’ll hope for the hydrogen fuel option, derived from water. They’re a simple release a couple of clamps, retrieve the containers, run to the refuelling machine, fill the containers, run back and put them into the ship again. Even if you’re quick, you’re looking at ninety seconds. If you get the more complicated flammable fuel, that involves loosening four clamps with a ratchet and socket. Oil is simpler still, though you’ll have to occasionally use multiple containers to clean out particulates and refill oil levels. You’ll also need to troubleshoot problems, but in a simple system, there’s not much to go wrong.

After a while, you’ll get a knack for how to repair the respective ship modules. Some of which require specialist equipment outside those you’re initially equipped with. The problem there being, you have to wait a day for the equipment. So you finish a task without a module fixed and take a financial hit.

Inevitably you don’t make rent and you realise that there’s a reason why the garage had a vacancy. Your predecessor didn’t make rent either and died as a consequence. You don’t make rent, you die too. A bit arbitrarily harsh admittedly, but that’s this game to a tee. Its done in a comedy fashion at least.

Only in your case, you get another opportunity. You see, Uncle Chop’s Rocket Shop is a roguelike. As well as actually learning how to repair specific modules, you can also unlock permanent perks that make your future runs a little easier. So as well as learning how to repair ships, you’ll have a bit of an advantage, These are trickled as tips from successful jobs and occasional drops into the repair shop. You get to keep the upgrades, which is more than can be said for the handy extras you’ve kitted out. Heaven forbid you’ve fully expanded the workshop as that’s all reset when you’re brought back from the dead.

If Uncle Chop’s Rocket Shop sounds onerous, it is. Yet because of the progression and the fact you’ve genuinely learned how to carry out a repair, you feel like you’re getting somewhere. If we had one wish, it would be for us to have the opportunity to put in some practice on those slightly trickier modules, as even with the manual you’re still under pressure to perform. Also, video instructions like a pseudo YouTube video would be useful. Some idiot drove into our car in real life and tore off a wing mirror, so we looked up a video on how to replace it. It’d be nice to have the same for this. We expect once people have played this a while videos will be there to help.

The end of the final day prior to the first rent day always has a ship that’s a bit more complicated. That’s our issue really, more that we have to work our way through failure over and again. We’ve nailed the security system, the tomfoolery module and the oil. But the rebreather system is just that bit too complicated to do. And when we do make an attempt, it’s pretty much guaranteed to fail as there’s multiple faults to resolve.

It’s at this point we either revert to a save and try again from the beginning of the day or begin the process anew, in the hope that the RNG is a little fairer next time. This game has its hooks into us, that’s for sure. But real life gets in the way a little, plus we have an actual day job that stops us playing this as much as we’d like.

In conclusion, Uncle Chop’s Rocket Shop is a good job sim with a mean difficulty streak, hindered by the nightmarish navigation of the grimoire on console. It’s clearly designed with the PC in mind with the console ports being the idiot cousin. Accordingly, we’d recommend a second screen just to get through the trickier parts of maintenance, especially as you learn the ropes. Do yourself a favour and download the repair manual off the website, better yet, find a YouTube guide to help with a specific module you’re stuck on. The roguelike parts are valued, as is the cute space cat who trills when you stroke him.