The Convenience Store, NEVER Again! She's Scary!

The Convenience Store (夜勤事件) is an indie, Japanese horror game from developer and publisher Chilla’s Art. The game was released on February 17th 2020.

You play a young woman who is working the night shift at a convenience store in a small Japanese town. Each night you collect a VHS depicting new cryptic images from a crime scene. Things slowly take a turn for the worst as strange instances begin to happen around the store. Until the final night comes and you have to make a choice, which will lead to one of two endings. However, two of the options lead to the same ending.

What I enjoyed

The Convenience Store has a unique and uneasy feel to it. The game gives off vibes of play through an old VHS tape, like watching someone walk to work on a dark and rainy night. In my opinion, it made the audio slightly untrustworthy. NPCs look particularly unnerving since the VHS-like quality allows them to look somewhat human-like. I loved the VHS feel, the audio and clunkiness of the characters gave it an unnerving feel, but almost in an “if this wasn’t a horror game it would be funny.”

As for the scares and atmosphere, I feel it was well done!

Firstly, each night there was at least one mundane task to get on with, so this lowered my guard a lot allowing for an effect of a jumpscare. However, the jumpscares were not all something flashing on the screen and screaming. They were well placed and sometimes just there to make you do a double-take only to think “I must have thought I saw something but didn’t actually see anything.” It allowed the “what ifs” to linger in my mind throughout the rest of the night.

There were also little details that if you know a bit about myths, legends and superstitions then you could appreciate. I found one at one section of the game and found it really cool until the meaning of it clicked and I realised I was buggered.

What I didn’t like/Issues I ran into

In all honesty, there wasn’t much I didn’t like about The Convenience Store. It’s a short game that can be done in one sitting, which is ideal for after a long day. For example, it took me around an hour and a half for my first play-through. Most of that time was because I got stuck on a puzzle on the later nights.

The only issue I came across, apart from getting stuck on the puzzle, was some minor glitching. At the start of my second play-through, there was some glitching with graphics and audio. It rained when I was inside the convenience store but only around me, and it was fixed on my third play-through.

Conclusion: The Convenience Store

In the end, The Convenience Store is a good wee game. I enjoyed it and it was worth the money. I think I only spent about £2 on it. There could have been a bit more to it, but again it is an indie horror and was only a couple of pounds!

I’m looking forward to playing the other games that Chilla’s Art has on the steam store.