Roadside Research

I've seen enough live-service co-op games launch with a hook and nothing underneath it to be skeptical every single time the words 'aliens' and 'simulator' show up in the same pitch. Roadside Research, out in Early Access from Cybernetic Walrus since February 2026, earned a longer look than most. The premise is a gas station management loop wrapped around a suspicion mechanic, and in co-op it turns out that combination has genuine legs. The day-to-day work is exactly what it sounds like: restocking shelves, pumping the correct grade of fuel (87, 89, 93, or diesel, and yes you can get it wrong), mopping alien goop off the floor, and keeping enough snacks on the rack to satisfy passing customers. That part plays like a looser, friendlier version of Supermarket Simulator. What separates it is the dual-progression system sitting underneath the station work. You are also, quietly, conducting an invasion. Human trash scattered around the lot contains DNA; you bag it, run it through a scanner in the back room, and turn those samples into alien research points that unlock a separate tech tree of 26 gadgets. The Brain Washer, the Replicator, the DNA Analyzer - each one pushes up your suspicion meter when deployed, which brings the Men in Black to your door. Get caught and you face a genuinely funny interrogation mini-game where you have to blink and breathe and, yes, fart convincingly enough to pass as human. Fail three rounds and your alien gets put down. It is exactly as chaotic as it sounds and the tonal commitment to the bit is what makes it work. From a live-service-aware perspective, the thing I watch for is whether the grind respects your time, and right now the answer is mostly yes. The upgrade loop has enough small wins per session that you do not feel like you are running the same shift in place. The developers have committed to roughly a year of Early Access with regular smaller patches and larger systems updates every three to four months, which is a realistic roadmap rather than a vague promise. The community Discord is active and the team is visibly responsive to bug reports, which matters a lot at this stage. Animation jank on cleaning tasks is a real irritant flagged by multiple players (the boot-sponge scrubbing hitbox is genuinely unreliable), and boxes clipping through the floor is a known issue that patches are chasing but have not fully resolved. These are Early Access problems, not fundamental design problems, and that distinction matters. The single-player situation is the honest hard limit here. Without AI crew members, one alien cannot realistically keep up with refueling, restocking, cleaning goop, and managing the suspicion meter simultaneously once the station starts scaling. This is Overcooked territory: the game is designed for two to four players and it shows every seam when you try to run it alone. If you do not have a regular co-op crew you can actually schedule sessions with, temper expectations accordingly. The friendslop comparison to Lethal Company and REPO that reviewers keep reaching for is accurate, both as a compliment and as a warning about replay depth once the novelty settles. Steam reception is sitting solidly in Very Positive territory across a meaningful review count, which for an Early Access indie in a crowded genre is a good sign that the core loop is landing. Yuki, Scout Team

Valve rates this game Steam Deck Playable. Runs flawlessly on Linux out of the box. Based on 14 ProtonDB community reports.

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