One Minute to Close is a stealthy twist on a familiar retail nightmare

Customer service jobs in supermarkets feel like a rite of passage in the UK. They offer an instructive and character-shaping congregation of work-placed nightmares. Whether it's the repeat shoplifters with odd nicknames, chancers who believe the warehouse should have every out-of-stock item available within seconds, or just the complainers unhappy that you've had the audacity to run out of ready-peeled quail eggs (that actually happened) we all have retail horror stories that linger in the mind long after other, more obviously important events, have faded. No wonder then, that upon finding the game One Minute to Close at WASD 2024, memories of working at a Waitrose in my student days immediately came flooding back.

SleepySwan Studios has chosen to explore the particular retail pain of customers who choose to show up right before closing. It's a common cruelty no matter which slice of the industry you work in. When you've had a long day stacking shelves or manning checkouts and the end is finally in sight, you just want to go home. "I only need a couple of things," you hear these people say while they wander aimlessly and delay your escape. The horror. Well, consider this payback, I guess. One Minute to Close doesn't just put you in the shoes of that dreaded late-night customer, it adds an inventive twist by turning the whole experience into a sandbox stealth mission.

Seriously. The game tasks you with finding six random items, giving you one real-time minute to search the store for everything you need. Grab a trolley and begin your late-night shopping: for those sixty seconds you can explore with total freedom. But when that time's up, the lights go out. You must then sneak towards the self-checkout after finding all six items, pay, and leave the building safely. It's easier said than done when your trolley's squeaking wheels clearly need some oil, and when the security guards roaming the aisles with flashlights are on high alert.

Dodging security doesn't get any easier each time you get caught. Quite the opposite. SleepySwan Studios uses an adaptive AI for each guard, one that learns your movements, making things noticeably trickier after you initially fumble things. You can see it happening, too. I noticed the guards' movement patterns would change, forcing me to take greater care every time I crouched for cover. Curse that squeaky trolley! My attempts to distract guards by throwing bananas or fish to make noises elsewhere didn't do me any favours, either. And I wanted those bananas!

Unsurprisingly for an early sandbox game demo, I encountered some jank. Items would sometimes clip through the trolley, and guards wouldn't always detect me when they should have. On one occasion, when I hid behind a shelf-stacking cage filled with several items - ah, the memories - the guard walked straight into me without registering my presence and kept pushing me along. I've never felt stealthier in my life.

Still, this did little to dampen my fun. Local co-op is available and it lets two people sneak around the store together, while I'm also told that an asynchronous multiplayer mode is being considered where two people can monitor your actions. It's a fun table-turning twist on an old service industry bother that many will find relatable, and I'm keen to see how One Minute to Close expands upon this premise. Now get out of here so I can cash-up.