Many management games, whether large scale like "SimCity" or small scale like "Two Point Hospital," often operate under the assumption that efficiency is the only thing holding the capitalist system together. With the right management (that's you), everything can be run perfectly. It's an attractive fantasy, but it neglects the contradictions inherent in the pursuit of profit. In order to keep the numbers up, you have to cut corners and make sacrifices. Flat-Eye is not a particularly good management game, but it is more interesting than many of its ilk. It centers on the tension between the desire for a perfect system and the contradictory needs of that system, creating something more than the sum of its parts.

As a remote manager working for Flat-Eye, you oversee the operations of a pit stop in Iceland. Customers come in to refuel or do a little shopping. Like the best/worst conglomerates, Flat-Eye supports many other businesses with one. They come to fill up on gas and buy groceries. Maybe they get a cup of coffee. Sooner or later, this little depot will offer everything from instant food to medical advice. After all, Amazon started out selling books, but soon it began to carry just about everything. Companies have a bottomless appetite, and the flat-eyes are always chasing expansion, new ways to exploit customers, and new areas of business.

It's certainly a charming little place. The Icelandic cold makes your depot look like a small cozy haven. The lo-fi visual style is a palpable dystopia, with bright colors and clean design. I had a lot of fun tweaking the layout, from placing a small divider between the self-service cash registers to a cardboard cutout of a welcome next to the self-help booths that hoover up personal data. Even though I knew I was a servant of the Weyland-Yutani Corporation and Wal-Mart, I found satisfaction in expanding it.

Your pit stop would be manned by a single clerk whom you would micromanage, queuing them tasks, stocking the shelves, and making sure all the modules of the store worked. At first, this is a simple and, to say the least, tedious task. But as the services your little pit stop provides grows, there is considerably more to think about. You have to create devices and services that complement each other while maintaining the three main resources: power, biomaterials, and data. For example, we could use the biomatter emitted from a smart toilet to turn it into food, although that wouldn't be in the commercials. Both devices require power supplied by a geothermal generator (dedicated to Iceland), and smart toilets can also supply data to self-help booths. Since different modules have different needs, they need to overlap in order for the station to function.

This is not particularly difficult, but when space and funds are limited, priorities must be set. Do you want to innovate? Will you focus on maximizing sales by getting as many people through the register as possible, or will you split up your store and generate revenue from dozens of different services?

Whichever you choose, you will quickly see how one employee is spread too thin. Self-service cash registers break down comically quickly, and most other equipment is almost useless. A simpler game would make up for this with clever placement. Flat-Eye" is not such a game. Instead, it is impossible to stop things from breaking down or to keep customers happy, no matter how devious you are. At least, not without running out of employees.

It's not just fatigue that threatens employee health. Employees get hurt. They may die. Repairs come with the risk of accidents, and your clerk may suddenly meet an unfortunate end. In the game system, that's not really a problem. Just hire a replacement. Business moves forward. People are just fuel for the corporate engine. The sequence of events, from death to employment, is conveyed through cutesy corporate pop-ups.

The visuals and design convey the Flat-Eye theme well, but the clear narrative chunks feel more clunky. Throughout the game, premier customers (custom-made NPCs that clerks can talk to) enter the station. In these encounters, the employees can be kept in close control or allowed to choose what to say. In these encounters, the quirky characters mainly explain their views on the Flat Eye and the declining situation in the (slightly) worse (understated) alternative 2022 than in our world. The writing is a bit flat and none of the dialogue is particularly exciting. Worse, while the introduction of a disposable clerk serves the larger theme of the game, it has no axe to grind in a narrative sequence such as this. The clerk is not much of a character, and certainly not an emotionally engaging one.

These customers can be somewhat interesting, but are generally too thin to be compelling. Their appearances and interactions are primarily related to the introduction of new services and items at the depot, seemingly intended to provide additional context for each device. Instead, they spell out information in an understated and subtle manner. The uncertainty of not knowing what is going on is far more affecting than a disgruntled eco-artist coming in and saying "corporations are evil". In exchange for nuance: ...... Well, I don't know if there is anything to be gained from that deal. It's a shame, because the narrative structure is a good idea to break up the monotony of the management team.

Along with these human NPCs, you have to deal with an AI that secretly runs the "flat-eyes"; the AI tries to steer you toward a larger goal involving the future of humanity, which is to make the world a better place. There is absolutely no malice intended; the scenes in which the AI uses the presentation as a cover for its monologue were novel at first, but quickly became an obstacle to hit the skip button and pass by.

The manager's desktop interface also has a messaging service that allows him to talk to others in the company. These chats are a bit more interesting. You can hurt or upset people, and your limited interaction options paint you as someone who is at best oblivious to, or worse, complicit in the exploitation of those around you. When a colleague tells you that they don't understand why you have risen so quickly despite being new to the company, you can cite luck as the cause, or you can simply argue that it is meritocracy. Whatever you choose, you cannot really help this colleague's situation. You benefit from the power structure, but have little power yourself. Still, this kind of dialogue is not as impactful as the management part of the game.

In the long run, there are definitely problems with the flat-eyes. In order to motivate (or give them the opportunity to rebel), daily quotas are imposed. Along with customer satisfaction and income, these quotas affect daily performance reviews. The more quotas we meet, the more we get new technology and upgrades to our stations. Even when I was most focused, progress was fairly slow and new ideas were never introduced fast enough to overcome boredom. In an attempt to mimic similar games for satirical purposes and lay bare the reality that is often shut out of these titles, "Flat Eye" forgot to mimic the depth of its management system.

The "Flat Eye" system serves the story well enough for a few hours, but eventually boredom prevails. Although all the busy work made me feel like a clerk managing a haphazard store, I had actually done this kind of work before and was not too keen on returning to this kind of rote memorization. Even when it tries to further the theme of the depot's inevitable disaster due to profiteering, "Flat Eye" fails to present an appealing hook beyond the initially effective commentary. It runs out of things to say long before the story reaches its endgame, leaving the player with a very simple little management game that does not allow for enough customization or tinkering with the system to create anything engaging in its own right.

I can totally sympathize with Flat-Eye's narrative goals, and in many ways it succeeds. It's just a shame that those effective devices are undermined by lackluster writing, NPC interactions, or the monotony of the loop that is the core of the gameplay. Nevertheless, for a good portion of its length, "Flat Eye" forced me to keep fiddling with the little gas station. Its ambiance is strong enough that I can recommend it, with some notable caveats. More depth in the management system would have helped "Flat Eye" overcome its narrative shortcomings, and a more engaging dialogue sequence would have made up for its basic structure. Both of these could have made it something special.

That said, I did like "Flat Eye". I enjoyed creating a secluded little pit stop, even if it had the potential to be unfulfilling. While it lacked narrative interest, it was an interesting corporate business simulator. However, the day-to-day grind of work inevitably put me off.