Discounty Review (PS5) – Everything Must Go

Despite my outright loathing of retail work, stemming from years of experience in it, something was alluring about Discounty. Whether it’s the aspect of being my own boss, the creative control over how I was going to lay out my shop, or just the notion of having a slice of laidback retail service for once in my employed life, Discounty seemingly offers all of the above, with a light slice-of-life narrative woven into it.

This is the debut from the three-person Danish studio, Crinkle Cut Games, and as far as first releases go, Discounty gets a lot of things right. It’s a supermarket sim reminiscent of Moonlighter’s shopkeeping gameplay. It’s also a little bit of a life sim that has you caught up in the sleepy town of Blomkest’s drama, from combative relationships, strange rumours that keep the residents gossiping, and the challenge of being an outsider.

Whilst all of what I mentioned is prevalent, Discounty is first and foremost a cosy game, or cosy sim, meaning that it is about as low stakes as a 1P buy-in for Blackjack. I’m not adverse to the cosy genre, I think games of that ilk are a necessary break from some of the high-strung titles most people are used to. However, Discounty kind of runs with how lax it is by offering no real opportunity to minmax or progress on your own terms for how well you can end up doing at running a shop. It’s this approach that I feel has hampered its potential. How cosy is too cosy? I think the answer is in a little discount supermarket.

In For A Penny

Booting up the game, you’ll make your own character through a handful of customisable options. You can adjust your hairstyle, eye colour, skin tone and clothes with a fairly light selection to choose from. Your created character is the nephew of a lady named Tellar, a resident of Blomkest, your new home. You’ve come here to assist Tellar in the running of a franchise she’s bought, the titular Discounty.

However, not long after you learn the lay of the land – figuratively and literally by exploring Blomkest – the shop is yours to work in, with no help or guidance from your auntie, though I put money on her taking her cut. At this point, it’s a very well-paced life/management sim. Running your shop means ordering the items, stocking the shelves, cleaning the floor, recycling empty boxes and more. You’re also dictated by time. A second is a minute; your days run from 6:00 AM to 11:00 PM, so immediately, I went into my Persona scheduling mode.

Neighbouring shops have their own opening hours, traders will be in certain parts of the town depending on the time, you also run your shop from 9-5, sometimes 6 if you’re still making your way through customers. It’s fair to say, I felt at home trying to organise my time and activities. With that said, despite being dictated by the time, there’s no real penalty for not going to bed at the time you should. You just pass out like you lost a Pokémon battle, and begin the next day. I get it, cosy, but why am I following loose rules when the rules amount to no consequence?

Out For A Pound

Speaking of rules, Discounty has a few unspoken mechanics that get looked over entirely. Because of how relaxed the game is, it doesn’t tell you how to properly run the shop. Things like stocking an item you want to sell by the door, so the customer will immediately gravitate towards it, or withholding the purchase of new items to stock, so you can budget your finances better on a day-to-day basis, or even doing the inverse, having all the items and creating longer shopping lists for customers, creating more revenue.

I could be alone here, but I like being informed on how to be efficient, especially when some of the later objectives require it. I beat the game in about 18-20 hours, but I think if there were more direction in the game, it could have been a little shorter, therefore less padded. There was only so much restocking shelves I really could be bothered doing, hours after we had closed – it really did start to feel like a job in some spots.

This is also due to the fact that the shop itself never quite feels big enough. As you progress, you unlock more shopping items to order for delivery on your work computer. There are also four different traders that end up having three different items for you to buy from them and sell. By the end, there are over 30 items you can sell in your shop, and there’s not enough room to keep a substantial amount of stock in each of them.

What A Bargain

I spent so much time just moving boxes, putting them in my inventory, swapping them out, picking up the empty ones, and recycling those down the street; it became tiresome. You can upgrade your inventory space, change your till into one that scans, and these amount to decent quality of life improvements, but there’s no reward for your efforts apart from a little bit more time to yourself.

Outside of running your supermarket, you are also a resident of Blomkest, and with that, you interact with the locals. Most of this aspect is what drives the narrative forward; you’ll be going back and forth, facilitating fetch quest-like demands, doing favours for them, but mostly engaging in conversation. I had Discounty described to me as something you have an agency in, decisions that’ll define your story; however, I think it’s ultimately the same.

You’ll have some points where you can choose a dialogue option, but I think they all return to a singular narrative. These, too, became a little monotonous as artificial progress blockers obfuscated my ability to move forward. Things like having to sell a certain number of items before upgrading a trade deal, or waiting for a day or two to roll by before I could continue the quest. It felt a little forced to make the playtime longer, and I started to grow tired of it.

Not For Sale

Progression as a whole just felt non-existent. There was no reason to play efficiently, to grow my supermarket or to min-max my time because the game’s story dictates all of it. You could easily work at the supermarket for 30 days, do nothing else, and it would still be the same from the first to the last hour. Games like Stardew Valley reward your efforts in your daily tasks, which don’t progress a story necessarily, and I think it’s a fair comparison when both are under the cosy moniker.

Despite my gripes with its lacklustre progression system, there’s nothing bad about Discounty. It is a relatively pleasant and relaxing game that passes the vibe check. The visuals are reminiscent of Eastward’s 16-bit pixel art with 3D lighting, whilst the music is very uplifting and chill ’80s TV soap bops. It’s inherently cosy with its audio/visuals, and the gameplay matches that too. Maybe I want more structure and progression in my simulators, but I can easily see Discounty as being just the right tonic for those looking for something so laidback it’s basically horizontal.

It also plays very well. Simple top-down view, intuitive controls of its checkout system, whether that’s keypading the price of items or scanning them, with a couple of unique eco-friendly gameplay mechanic that sees you recycling in various ways, and a downright lovely town to explore overall. For a first game, Crinkle Cut Games does a lot of the right things in Discounty. I just wish there were more cohesion and progression tied to my efforts, rather than the story it’s trying to tell.

Discounty will release 21st August 2025 for PlayStation 5 (review platform), Nintendo Switch, Xbox and PC via Steam.

Developers: Crinkle Cut Games

Publisher: PQube

Disclaimer: In order to complete this review, we were provided with a promotional copy of the game. For our full review policy, please go here.

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