Rip Them Off is a tower-defence style game featuring a minimalist aesthetic, focusing on taking people’s money via shopping sprees. The game places the player in the corporate world and in front of “The Board”, a team of faceless business people preying on the public’s desires for good and services. The shoppers are aptly named as Dupes. They will show you no mercy if you fail to meet their quota. Of course you can restart the level, but they send you a rude little note to remind you how poorly you did.
The way the game works is pretty simple. Hit the quota as fast as you can. To do this, you will have to pay attention to the locations of your store and where the Dupes are spending their money. They will enter from pre-set locations, and it’s the player’s job to place shops in an order that will net the most money. There are nine types of shops available, with different features such as capacity and the length of time the store is open. Of course, the bigger the profit a store generates, the more expensive it is to build.
The gameplay is structured by challenges given by The Board. These can vary in range from hours to days, to weeks. The longer the challenge, the harder it will be. At the end of a day you will be able to look at your shops and measure their efficiency. Rip Them Off also lets you know the number of upset customers, either because the capacity was full or because they’ve seen the same shop earlier on their path.
Unfortunately the game only allows you to see if your strategy is working after the challenge is over. This can become incredibly frustrating at length because while you might think you’re on track you won’t really know until the end. I’ve been hundreds off completing a challenge and it can be quite upsetting.
Whatever your style is, you’ll likely have to play Rip Them Off tediously slow so that you can track the shoppers closely. There are three speeds available for the challenges so if you wanted you could run through different methods relatively quickly, but it’ll be harder to track your stats.
Rip Them Off is definitely worth taking a look at simply for its twist on a classic genre. You’ll likely enjoy the early challenges before becoming ultimately frustrated during the longer sessions. It’s a game which could be really quite enjoyable if it was more accommodating to the player.
Rip Them Off is available now on Steam. Check out more FULLSYNC gaming reviews here.