After a handful of shifts as a cashier in CHESTO – At the Checkout, I’d learned a few important things: it’s an extremely under-appreciated/underpaid job, not to mention one where people – including your boss – freak out at the smallest of mistakes. So just ignore everyone and focus on scanning and packing groceries as fast as possible, unhappy customers be damned. There are worse ways to make a living after all.
In case you couldn’t tell from the above screenshot, CHESTO – At the Checkout is a parody game, and a fun one at that. There’s stuff to unlock, including new customers (or types, rather) and additional types of food, the latter being the game’s metaphorical bread and butter. See, from frozen chicken to cigarettes and beyond, everything rolling across the conveyor belt needs to be rotated and spun to locate the bar code for scanning. And if you want to make a profit, you’ll have to be fast as customers are… well, let’s just say they’re hardly the most patient bunch.
Each and every shopping item you scan in-game will have an influence on the profit perfomance of the globally operating food retail chain CHESTO. It is up to you and your play-style to help CHESTO’s profit skyrocket or let it go bankrupt.
No one’s saying you have to play by the rules though, as even if it might mean employment termination, playing with the food, dragging your feet and pissing off the current customer even more – totally an option! You’ll feel it after the shift when the progress report pops up with a lot of red numbers, but so what? Fight the power! …and so on.
Oh and in case you’re wondering how CHESTO is doing right now, their website features a stylish ‘Profit Before Interest and Tax’ (wait, what?) graph. A graph which I, personally, hope to one day see dive. Dive, dive, and then dive some more. Not that CHESTO – At the Checkout, as a game, isn’t fun, mind you. Because it most certainly is, rude customers and all. It’s just the retail chain, and the way their employees are treated, that I have a beef with. Quite a big beef though. One I’d drop on the floor, to then scan several times, drop on the floor again, and then… maybe I’ll put it in the shopping cart to move things along. Probably not though.
On a more serious note, CHESTO – At the Checkout is a game you really should try, and that goes double for anyone who’s ever worked as an underpaid cashier (is there any other kind, though?). It may be a bit tricky to get the hang of at first, physics being what they are, but after a few minutes, it’ll be smooth sailing, more or less. That and its funky art style, and grocery variety – even the rude remarks from customers – all create interesting and entertaining gameplay. Just remember what I said about how no one is forcing you to play nice. That part is very important.