Take a look at the top games on Steam this week and nestled among big names like Marvel Rivals and Monster Hunter Wilds is Schedule I: an early access first-person drug-dealing sim that looks like extras from Rick & Morty are acting out the plot of Breaking Bad.
I was pretty much expecting another streamer-bait meme game looking to be edgy by featuring kush and coke. But after playing a few hours I can easily agree with the "Overwhelmingly Positive" review scores on Steam: it's a great sim with engaging systems and a ton of personality, plus a well-paced sense of progression as you go from dealing weed out of a tiny motel room to building a proper drug manufacturing and distribution empire.
Schedule I launched just this week but it's rocketed up the Steam charts with nearly 200,000 concurrent players today, a number which I suspect will grow over the weekend. Its Breaking Bad hook is evident, as you begin the game with a tiny drug lab in the back of an RV in a dusty desert town. Sound familiar?
Unlike Walter White, however, you don't start with meth, you start by buying seeds to grow pot plants. It's a lot of work, too: buying bags of soil, cutting them open, dumping the dirt into flowerpots. Water the soil, place a seed and bury it, water it again, then snip the buds when they're grown and bag them individually. Then you make small deals with individual buyers, arranged and negotiated via text message and conducted face-to-face in an alley behind a barbershop or in a vacant basketball court near the waterfront.
Growing, harvesting, and selling a few small baggies of kush is about all you can accomplish in a single day, but the tiny sliver of profit you make can be invested in more plants and equipment. Give out free samples to attract new customers, learn their preferences and gain their trust, and eventually you'll be introduced to prospective employees, like a dealer you can hire to handle your buys.
Bit by bit, you can transition from a tiny weed business to making harder drugs, gaining even more customers and accessing new regions of the city to sell in to make more money. I'm not all that far along yet, but I've graduated from "Street Rat" to "Hoodlum" so I'm making just enough gains to get a sense for my next moves: a bigger drug lab, more workers, and more money.
Of course, there are dangers: nosy cops stalk the neighborhood by day, more than happy to rifle through your pockets or arrest you if they spot you dealing. And do you think the cartel is going to sit back while you dominate the market? There's a reason you can eventually access a weapons dealer. (All I have now is a baseball bat, and I don't think that's going to be enough.)
Schedule I is a lot of fun right from the start, and I'm looking forward to dealing a ton of drugs this weekend (and then playing more of the game). It's on sale on Steam for 15% off for the rest of the month, and there's even a demo if you want a free taste.
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