Roadside Research blends gas station sim chaos with alien nonsense, and the result is far more entertaining than it has any right to be.
There are only so many times you can be told to stack shelves, mop floors and scan barcodes before shop sims start blending into one big retail blur. I’ve played enough of them now to know the routine. Open store. Sell stuff. Upgrade store. Repeat until your eyes glaze over and you start dreaming in stock counts.
So when Roadside Research turned up, I’ll admit I expected more of the same. And, for the first few minutes, it absolutely looks like that’s what you’re getting. Another management sim. Another Early Access grind. Another loop of stocking products and chasing cash.
Then you realise you’re not actually human. You’re an alien. Wearing what is essentially a napkin over your face and somehow fooling the entire general public.
And just like that, it becomes a lot more fun.
Developed by Cybernetic Walrus and published by Oro Interactive, Roadside Research is out now on PC and Xbox, with its Steam version currently in Early Access. The core pitch is gloriously stupid in the best possible way: run a roadside service station, blend in with humanity, and quietly gather research for… whatever weird extraterrestrial plan you’ve got brewing. Steam users are responding well so far, too, with a “Very Positive” overall rating at the time of writing.
Retail, but with more goop
The basics of Roadside Research are familiar enough. You build shelves, fill them with products, sell bits to customers, clean up, refill pumps, expand the station and keep the money rolling in. If you’ve played any of these business sims before, you’ll feel right at home.
But Roadside Research knows that just being “another sim” isn’t enough, so it throws in its real hook early: alien research.
At first, that means collecting rubbish, chucking it into a scanner and farming DNA like some sort of intergalactic bin man. But then the research tree opens up and things start getting weird. Cameras. Video equipment. Self-scanning bins. Inflatable wacky-arm alien things to draw in trade. Automatic probing toilets, which I imagine are less popular with customers than the game suggests.
That upgrade tree is where the game starts to carve out its own identity. You’re not just improving a service station. You’re building a very suspicious alien operation in the middle of nowhere and hoping nobody important notices.
Naturally, they do.
The suspicion system is where the chaos lives
The more alien nonsense you get up to, the more suspicion you build. And once that meter gets high enough, agents show up to investigate what exactly is going on at your definitely-normal roadside business.
This is where Roadside Research gets properly entertaining.
Instead of turning into some dramatic combat encounter, it becomes a string of mini-game style tests where you have to prove you’re human. Blink like a human. Breathe like a human. Fart like a human. You know, the normal stuff.
It’s daft, but it works. And if you get bored with playing nice, you can unlock tools like ray guns and mind-wiping devices to sort the problem out more directly. Just… maybe don’t miss. Friendly fire is very much a thing here, and accidentally turning your mate into a puddle of alien mush because your aim’s gone sideways is the sort of co-op disaster that can either ruin a friendship or make the whole session much funnier.
Other players seem to have landed in a similar place: the alien twist and suspicion mechanic are what stop it from feeling like just another stock-and-sell sim, and the game’s strongest moments tend to come when that quiet management loop gets interrupted by a burst of panic.
Solo is fine. Co-op is where it comes alive
I started out playing Roadside Research solo, and to be fair, it’s a perfectly decent way to learn the ropes. The pace is manageable, the tasks are straightforward, and it gives you time to understand the station, the tech tree and the alien systems without everything going completely off the rails.
But it can feel a bit lonely.
Once you’ve done a few rounds of stocking shelves, serving customers and dragging rubbish back to the scanner, you start to realise the game really wants other people involved. Bring friends in and the whole thing gets busier, messier and more chaotic in all the right ways. Suddenly, one person’s on fuel, one’s stocking, one’s panicking because an agent has turned up, and someone else has just fired a ray gun into the wrong room.
That’s where Roadside Research shines.
This isn’t just my experience, either. A common thread from players has been that co-op is where the game really clicks, while solo can feel slower and, in some cases, a bit of a slog once the station expands.
A few bits could use more depth
For all the fun Roadside Research has with the premise, there are still areas where the Early Access label shows.
Pricing, for example, feels a bit undercooked. You can change what you charge for products, and the game shows you the cost, market price and profit margins. Nice idea. Except for what I’ve seen, those values don’t really shift in a meaningful way, which takes some of the strategy out of running the place. If costs and market values moved around more, you’d have a reason to keep checking and adjusting instead of setting prices and largely forgetting about them.
Then there’s the alien research page on the computer, which can be weirdly misleading. Some unlocks are shown with dollar values, but they’re actually bought with research points, not cash. It doesn’t take long to work out, but at first, it had me thinking I needed two currencies to progress, which is not the sort of confusion you want in a management sim.
And yes, there is still that creeping sense that, like many games in this lane, repetition could become a problem down the line. The gimmick is strong enough to carry it for now, but keeping players around long-term is going to depend on how much variety Cybernetic Walrus can inject over time. To their credit, they’ve already said they want to expand the alien tech, multiplayer interactions, station upgrades, NPCs and other systems during Early Access, which is exactly the sort of thing the game will need.
Tail-end thoughts on Roadside Research
I’ve played enough shop and service station sims to know when one’s just copying the homework. Roadside Research at least tries to scribble something weird in the margins.
It’s still got the familiar bones of the genre. Shelves, profits, upgrades, repetitive jobs. But wrapping all that in an alien research gimmick, a suspicion meter, human-impression mini-games and co-op chaos gives it a personality most of these sims never manage.
Does it feel a little basic in places? Yes. Could the economy use more depth? Definitely. Is solo play missing some of the spark? Also yes.
But when it all comes together with friends, with agents snooping about and someone accidentally liquefying their teammate while a customer waits for fuel, it becomes the exact sort of nonsense that makes these games worth playing in the first place.
Roadside Research is not reinventing the genre. It is, however, giving it a much-needed bit of weird.
Roadside Research is out now in Early Access on Steam and for Xbox. For even more game reviews, click right here.