Uncle Chop's Rocket Shop is a delightfully tactile spaceship repair sim that reminds me how terrible I am at reading instruction manuals

As someone who finally flew the nest earlier this year and has had to come to grips with real adult life, I've learned two damning truths: Washing dishes freaking sucks, and I'm really bad at building furniture.

To be totally honest, I've always been a bit naff at following instructions. I've lost count of how many times I've asked for directions to the toilet in a pub or restaurant only to somehow get lost in the 10 seconds it takes to walk there. Instruction manuals seem to be my true kryptonite, though, which makes my eagerness to be good at Uncle Chop's Rocket Shop all the more tragic.

I first peeped Beard Envy's rocket ship repair roguelite at Gamescom in 2022, and since then I've been awaiting the chance to shove my multi-eyed fox head deeper into the toolbox. My chance is finally here thanks to Steam's most recent Next Fest, and boy have I been humbled by how deliciously difficult the demo is.

With an assortment of busted-up ships dropping by and my tattooed fox-slash-human Wilbur having rent to pay lest he end up under the sod, Rocket Shop's in-fiction manual quickly becomes my holy grail. It has absolutely everything I need to figure out all the different switches and doodads lurking beneath every panel: Fuel and oil changes, disabling blaring security panels, "Honk-approved" wiring. If I need to fix it at some point, the manual tells me how.

Except being on a timer—to keep business moving I have only seven minutes to figure out how to change a ship's oil, for example—turns out to be way more stressful than I anticipated when seconds tick by while I'm flicking through pages for instructions. (It's worth noting there's an alternative playstyle which trades in the stopwatch for more difficult jobs and mistakes that ding you for more money).

Up in space 

I will hand it to Uncle Chop's Rocket Shop: its diagrams and instructions are infinitely more helpful than the Wingdings-ass hieroglyphics I've been dealing with across countless IKEA furniture items this year. It may have taken me almost two hours and three separate attempts to successfully build my Billy bookcase, but I was determined to swap out this bloke's fuel tank in one swift go. Well, as swift as my reading comprehension would allow.

First thing's first: Reading the goddamn manual and figuring out what everything is. Each part of the fuel tank is dutifully marked, as well as what I should be looking out for in faulty tanks. The following pages are filled to the brim with every single instruction I could need from retrieving the canisters to potentially rewiring any shoddy electrical work.

As I work on wrangling the fuel canister out of its prison, I can't get over how delightfully tactile every component is. Clicking on the clips in the corner snaps them open, and pulling on various levers brings the canister closer to my grasp. Fully undoing it requires me to whip out a ratcheting wrench and swing my mouse back and forth to crank it. Despite sharing the same frantic wrist-flick motion you'd see me do in the throes of an FPS, it's so much more satisfying hearing the crank-crank-crank into the delicate click of release.

That gratification extends beyond the ship's controls as I head over to the refuel station, click a brand-new canister in and pull the lever down. The fuel indicator slowly ticks, ramping up in speed before I throw the lever back up to prevent the thing overfilling and breaking all over again. It's a perfect fill. I slot it back into the ship, secure the whole thing and send my little alien bloke on his way. Success!

It doesn't take long for the broken ships to ramp up in difficulty though, and before I know it I have a bizarre ship descending onto my platform with an alarm that won't stop screeching at me. I'm told I need to repair the wailing security system, change the oil and deal with a rebreather. The first and last of which I've yet to come across in my previous few ships. Back to the book.

The manual's explanations for a rebreather and security system are far more complex than the last ship's fuel tank, and I inevitably run out of time as I fix the security system, only for it to reset and start blaring at me as I work on the rebreather. I completely biff it and watch as my rent money evaporates. Uncle Chop ruthlessly murders me for my crimes of reading slowly and fumbling my way around an alien klaxon.

I've dipped back into the shop again since that first run, the meta progression helping a touch with my money-making abilities. I gotta admit though, I still haven't been able to make that first rent payment after a couple hours. But hey—I can do a fuel change now without even looking at the manual, and building that sort of knowledge is a satisfaction all its own. I promise I'll learn how to actually change a rebreather and pay Uncle Chop soon.