Drug Dealer Simulator does what it says on the box: it faithfully recreates the experience of dealing drugs (…apparently). It’s compelling as well, giving everything you’d expect from this kind of simulator, such as retrieving supplies from dead drops, cutting the product with other ingredients, and selling it. It all adds up to an experience with excitement, a sense of danger, consequences, and rewards. However, that experience also reveals the grind and repetitiveness of the whole affair, where its adherence to realism hurts the fun.
Realism might be too strong a word for Drug Dealer Simulator; it’s relatively realistic but there’s some suspension of disbelief required. The neighbourhood for one feels more post-apocalyptic than simply run-down. Even the more prosperous areas don’t feel like a real place. Instead drab brown textures are draped everywhere, and buildings feel copy-pasted and make everywhere look the same. There’s a lack of complexity and detail to the area that would make it feel alive and real.
Meanwhile, people walking around feel like what they are: scripted and predictable. The police checkpoints and patrols make the world feel like Judge Dread, with their strict searching, poor regard for everyone they encounter, and brutal tasing of anyone they find even slightly suspicious… Okay, so maybe that part is realistic, but overall it fails to sell this slice of a city as real.
Fortunately, the actual drug dealing side of things fairs much better. This feels spot on. Your contact takes your order of product and leaves it at a dead drop for you to collect. You pick it up, take it home and package it into different quantities to sell, maybe cutting it with other ingredients to stretch your resources a little more and make more money. This feels real. Your customers place orders with you or your hired dealers a little later in the game, and you deliver what they need to them.
Venturing anywhere with drugs is risky. The police frequently patrol and will stop and search if you act suspicious around them. Running and hiding your stash can save you from losing any product, but if caught with anything on you there’s a high chance it’ll be taken along with a fine. This danger is more prevalent at night, where the police patrol is in greater numbers. It’s exciting and engaging, as you learn your neighbourhood, sell your drugs, start making money and then play the risk-reward of modifying your products, buying more equipment to modify and package your products, grow your network and influence and become a drug dealing kingpin.
The road to drug kingpin is quite a long one as well. The pacing of new drugs, new areas to expand into and sell, and new challenges to overcome, feels good. It allows you to get comfortable with the mechanics and begin to master them before something new comes along to add complexity and things to learn or bigger risks to take. It does largely boil down to the same actions, though: get product, cut and package product, sell product, repeat. This can get repetitive, despite differences in the drug, location or challenge of reaching a location, but Drug Dealer Simulator does try to inject new things at every step to keep you entertained and engaged.
Selling outside of your original neighbourhood requires passing through police checkpoints and there are multiple ways to overcome this obstacle. It is inevitable at some point to try using the sewers, a confusing maze of locked gates and seldom few exits and entrances, but it’s a new location and a useful way to get around at least. Meanwhile, the aforementioned new kinds of drugs require new equipment to help package and cut. You’ll never fully become Jesse Pinkman, but you get close enough to enjoy a slither of that fantasy role-play.
There are also always some specific objectives to complete. In the early game this could be as simple as giving out free samples to try and tempt new customers, but later it gets more compelling and reveals more story elements. Drug Dealer Simulator largely relies on emergent gameplay, and it sets the world up well enough to allow for that, but the simple story that’s moving along behind the scenes occasionally brings you in to further it along and it makes the world more interesting.
Drug Dealer Simulator simulates the drug dealing process well, it mechanically feels like it should (like we all imagine), and the writing and voice acting helps sell it even more. Visually it looks a lot like the other simulators on the market. It’s a realistic but basic aesthetic that all feels like the sharp square polygons of the early 2000s but with mostly modern high-resolution textures helping to paint everything believably. Still, a few muddy textures have found their way in, and the colour palette is limited and drab. It’s all serviceable and helps pull you into the simulation further, but the lighting can be a bit problematic.
It’s largely, if not entirely, real-time lighting: technically impressive and realistic in principle but in desperate need of better global illumination. The shadows it casts are dense voids that make navigation at night a nightmare. Even during the day, thanks to a neat day/night cycle, the lighting can become an enemy to your vision. The torch on the in-game mobile is a nice touch, though, so navigation isn’t completely compromised in the dark corners, but you’ll certainly run into a few police patrols during your criminal escapades, and it feels utterly unfair when you do.
It’s not just navigating the world that can be a nuisance. The user interface is clunky and difficult to use. It feels like what it almost certainly is: made for mouse and keyboard and poorly translated to controller. There are navigation restrictions for moving between UI elements and context sensitive button presses that can be confusing. There’s also quite a bit going on with the UI when cutting and packing drugs, which makes the process slow and fiddly, especially as this also requires you to interact with the game world and the UI at the same time.
It’s a bit repetitive, rough around the edges, and clunky, but it’s still fun. It makes one feel like a drug dealer. The terminology, methods of cutting the product, and clandestine selling are all well researched and implemented here. Money is tight and the margins are small, which encourages expansion and the taking of risks, helping the experience with its realism and pushing players to explore all the game has to offer to find the perfect ingredients and process, the perfect routes through the city, the perfect building to purchase and use as hideouts, and committing to the right customers and their ‘habits’. It’s enjoyable enough to keep you entertained for a few hours, but not polished enough to addict you and keep you coming back.
