Vending Machine Co.

Ok first of all, sorry for this very long review. I tried to keep it short, but apparently I had 253 in-game days worth of emotions to process haha. Enjoy!😭

When it first came out, I totally didnt understand the mixed reactions. I kept asking my friends what they thought, and the opinions were ALL over the place XD from “this is overwhelming” to “this is weirdly addictive,” to “not my cup of tea,” and even “their best game so far.” Meanwhile i was spending many hours in the first town, cause i wanted all the upgrades before unlocking new places. The first 12ish hours, I actually avoided the upgrade where all the money automatically goes to the bank because… I actually really loved running around collecting the coins myself LOL 💰 Tiny goblin behavior, I know. But at one point the game got a little too chaotic with all the new towns, so okayyyy, the auto-bank upgrade won.

I really enjoyed my first 15-20 hours with the game. At first I was happily running around collecting coins like: “ooo look at my tiny business!!” But then reaching 22+ hours I was basically doing unpaid overtime, surviving on vending machine snacks and pure determination. After that, it slowly turned into “okay, now we achievement hunt” mode… which somehow STILL took me forever. I ended up with around 27 hours total! And I seriously expected this game to be max 15h XD Normally I would NEVER complain about a game giving me lots of playtime. (Just to be clear haha) But for Vending Machine Co .... Slowly turned me from a cute little shop/vending machine owner, into a sleep-deprived employee of the month at Vending Machine Headquarters. (I dont think this is a thing, but still) Nope. That was just toooo much.

But Ulle???? why hunt for all the achievements, you ask….. yeah dont ask haha 😭
at some point it stops being about the achievements and becomes PERSONAL. The game and I were in a toxic relationship by Day 200. And do not even get me started on the partner achievements. Oh. My. God. I was missing ONE SINGLE partner achievement for the juice collab. ONE!!! Even though the game gives you 3 options AND lets you reroll two extra times, the game simply refused to give it to me. By in-game Day 121, I was officially DONE. I started skipping days, instantly sleeping, and just waiting for the partner event to appear every 10-ish days. By the end, I felt like a rusty vending machine running on pure hope and expired juice boxes.
Then I finally hit Day 200 and got the 200 days achievement… BUT I STILL DID NOT HAVE THE LAST PARTNER.

Days kept passing…
My sanity kept fading…
And then… on Day 253… IT FINALLY APPEARED.
I just sat there staring at the screen like:
“Wait… is this real? Am I hallucinating? Did the vending machine gods finally bless me omg???”

BUT IT WAS REAL.
I WAS FREEEEEE

But for real? I really did love the game a lot! Even tho it was probs not what you though reading through this review haha. I just think they maybeeee pushed some of the achievements a tiny little bit too far because 200+ in-game days was starting to feel less like cozy vending machine management and more like I had accidentally dedicated my entire life to the vending machine industry.

Why is this game so addicting????

I've played for nearly 23 hours so far. Here are my notes:

•I got this game ahead of launch, it was AWESOME to see game improvements and additions happening. Almost everything I thought "Oh I wish this game had.." got added in.
•The art is adorable, and I love that you can get click reactions from the neighborhood cats/birds
•The soundtrack is pretty solid. A couple of the songs I do skip upon occasion, just because they had some repetitive sounds, but I don't think most people would notice.
•The fruit drop game should be illegal. I spent WAY too much time playing it.

Helpful hints:
•If you go into the "Hot items" tab in the store, you can hover over the hot item icon on the corner of the item and it will tell you which area it's for.
•You can't scrub down machines until they get dirty. I did spend some time trying to use my sponge from the toolbox before realizing that lol
•Renting out as many machines as possible in a new area, then slowly buying them out really helped me not to run out of money to stock my machines.
•If you're swapping out items from machines, you can box all, fill the machine(Use spread all in the machine settings if you don't have enough to fully fill the machine, each spot needs to be occupied) and then shift click the boxes to get them to go into your truck, rather than dragging each box over. However, if you have any of the boxed items in the machine, it will fill those first.

Things I hope they add:
•A way to sort hot items by area, or load items by area. There are a lot of items and it can kind of get overwhelming to keep going back and forth.
•A way to stack everything in the warehouse, and to autoload all hot items in the warehouse into the truck.
•A way to see which items events apply to. For example, there's a week where I thought everything under the traditional/spiritual tab in the store would be selling, but it seemed like the customers were only really buying charms.

All in all, a completely awesome game and another cozy winner from Rogue Duck. I've technically "won" the game(though I haven't completed all the accomplishments) and I fully intend to keep playing.

Addictive, cute, and very fun game!

I'm raising prices when people demand something more and because of it, i'm getting richer every day. That's how capitalism works, right?

Anyways, go buy and play it yourself already its sooo addictive!