Is this game a masterpiece? Probably not, but it is quite unique. And some ppl might enjoy the things you have to do. You play a fox and are forced to run a repair shop on a strange asteroid. First you select the game mode - work on stuff with a time limit or without. And then the game starts - customers land, and while they drink a coffee in the bar, you have to repair (and not damage/destroy) their stuff. Look in your (thick) grimoire to see detailed instructions like from your last IKEA closet on how to assemble/repair things. Fortunately, there are signs on the things to repair that show you where to find it in your grimoire. And then just do that - grab your tools and work on stuff.

First you have to restore power to your van - remove the old fuel cell, buy a new one, charge it, insert it in the tank again. Your second job is already quite more difficult - restore oil pressure in a space ship. You can do it without the grimoire if you are a mechanical genius - but the idea is to read how to do it in the grimoire and then do it. This also helps to avoid deadly accidents. You soon expand your shop with new machines, and wonder what strange creatures visit your shop. Talk to them, repair their stuff and earn money, or you will soon have a problem with your boss who charges you a fee every few days… if you fail, a run ends and you start again, but this time maybe with a bit more machines at the start.

Gamepad is supported and works fine.

Conclusion:
Run a chop shop and work on various machines. Enjoyable for players who love to assemble furniture with the help of illustrated instructions in real life.

Uncle Chop's Rocket Shop is exactly what it says on the tin - a roguelite spaceship repair simulation - but in a way it's much more than that. It takes a standard roguelite progression loop and builds off both the mechanical upgrades tied to it as well as the player's increasing game knowledge and familiarity to make for a pretty good time. There's a huge variety of different systems to learn how to diagnose and fix, but the developers are sensible enough to also reuse concepts and pieces to ease that burden, like how a good half dozen different systems use the same kind of encoded flash carts. There's real satisfaction in learning how to immediately be able to tell at a glance exactly what the problem is with something and what to do about it.

This all works because of how weird and funny the world, dialogue, and scenarios are. Sure, oil and fuel changes are pretty straightforward, but then you get into the snail-based atmosphere systems, learning how to cause an emotional breakdown on an AI so you can build them back to the appropriate mood, how to get the appropriate flavor of gumball for the cockpit console, and so on. There's a weird logical consistency to it all that works even as you're being asked to do stranger and bigger things, particularly in the side story routes, where the learning curve to "refilling a missile defense battery" is pretty minor since it's just an adapted version of slotting in a fuel cylinder, and even the dark cultists use the same sort of punchcard timekeeping system as the rocket shop. The final mission of the game does an excellent job of throwing completely new tasks at you but in a manner that directly builds off the different things you've done to that point. The characters and aliens are weird, the dialogue is hilarious, and the objectives you get are continually new and strange and fun to work through. Even across multiple loops through the game and repeated system fixes, there's always some new dialogue line or visual gag to laugh at.

It's not a perfect game, of course. The two biggest problems are largely tied together; proper runs through the game (either on the main branch or one of the side factions) are pretty lengthy, even as you learn how to potentially cut corners or increased metaprogression unlocks let you largely circumvent the cash burdens that largely brick a lot of early runs. This goes hand in hand with the fact there's not some sort of training or practice mode available for modules. You have to learn on the fly, which is fine for something like fixing a VR system or a toilet, but is a lot more problematic when you've got a ship landing with a fusion reactor that's on the verge of imminent meltdown and can kill you before you learn the tricks to safely handle things. There's also a bit of balance disparity between the Frantic modes (real time limits per game day) and Focused modes (unlimited time but limited ships per day), where the game feels to an extent like it's built around the former, but can fall apart when you've got ships on later days with multiple systems to fix that take so long that you can't even properly take advantage of the theoretical higher limit on jobs-per-day. This also ties into that lack of training modes where the first few times you get a complicated system you're going to be sitting there for minutes on end reading and referring to the guide just trying to figure out what you're looking at let alone how to diagnose the problems. I do recommend doing some Frantic runs to appreciate that knife-edge balance and learning how to optimize your repair work, but I did spend the latter half of my time in game on Focused mode so I wouldn't lose runs when encountering and learning one of the new late game systems.

Ultimately though Uncle Chop's Rocket Shop is a great time if you're someone with a tolerance for failure in games and can appreciate that balance of hilariously weird presentation and oddly-straightforward-at-times fix-it gameplay. If the trailer catches your eye, give it a go.

It's like if Papers Please was cuter, had more eldritch horror, but was somehow more repetitive, ridiculously overstimulating, and beyond unhelpful regarding errors.