Repair This! is a business and repair shop simulation game with a rather humorous and satirical take on society and the intricacies of data privacy. Read our review to see what it did well, what it didn't do well, and if it's worth buying.
Repair This! Review Overview
What is Repair This?
Repair This! is a quirky business management simulation game where you step into the shoes of a new phone technician in a new town, where you simultaneously repair phones with simple, easy-to-follow gameplay and influence the storyline with your choices. After all, you have people’s lives and dark secrets in your hands. Will you make the right decisions? The game itself is a satirical and humorous interactive commentary about privacy and technology, while also showcasing that your choices have their consequences.
Repair This! features:
⚫︎ A Phone Business Simulator
⚫︎ Humorous And Satirical Plot
⚫︎ Interesting 2D Cartoon Style
⚫︎ Multiple Endings
⚫︎ Dozens Of Unique Customers To Deal With
 Steam |
$11.99 |
Repair This! Pros & Cons
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
 Large Cast Of Characters Intriguing Storyline Simple but Challenging Gameplay |
Imperfect English Translation Short, Could Be Longer |
Repair This! Overall Score - 74/100
Repair This! is an overall decent game with an interesting premise and colorful cast of characters that are sure to amuse you. While the visuals and soundtrack may just be rather average and don’t leave much of an impact, the story, choices-matter mechanic, and the quirky individuals you meet throughout the game will surely leave a lasting impression.
Repair This! Story - 8/10
Story-wise, it’s interesting in the way that you work as a phone technician and that you literally have peoples’ lives in the palm of your hand. While it’s not intensely deep or compelling, there is a charm to it, and knowing that your choices matter in the bigger scheme of things make it engaging. There are a bunch of side narratives from the customers that you can piece together as well while you play.
Repair This! Gameplay - 8/10
While the overall gameplay loop can get quite repetitive due to the cyclical nature of the job, the random events that pop out of nowhere do make for an interesting addition to what would have been just a dull routine. The large cast of characters with unique dialogue make up for it as well, where you’ll never have the exact same set of customers in a single day. Heck, even the delivery men are all different.
Repair This! Visuals - 6/10
The 2D cartoon art style is nothing to write home about, but if you’re a fan of the older, browser-based Flash Player games, this might strike a nostalgic chord with you. It’s also an added plus that no one customer looks exactly alike, and you can easily distinguish one from the other.
Repair This! Audio - 7/10
As you play along, you are accompanied by some pretty chill beats that add to the atmosphere of a quaint little phone repair shop. It’s nothing amazing or exceptional, but it’s not bad either.
Repair This! Value for Money - 8/10
At $11.99, it’s not exactly a bargain for an indie game but the replayability it has because of its multiple endings and branching mini storylines can make it worth your while if you have the time to do so.
Repair This! Review: A Decent Blend of Managing, Repairing, And Spying
Repair This! places you in the boots of a certain unnamed protagonist who has always been passionate about technology from a young age, but living in the countryside wasn’t doing you any favors—so you set out for the bigger and better city to finally fulfill your dreams of being a phone repair technician. Quite an ambitious feat, and lets the game start off on a pretty happy note.
Setting up shop in the urban city, there begins the game, where you do your cyclical routine. Engage with customers, find out what’s wrong with their phone, order the parts, insert said parts into the mobile device, then get paid for your services. Rinse and repeat. It can be quite dull, but what adds to the experience is that the customers you get are quite colorful and varied. Then, from those customers come other opportunities that will affect the plot and the fate of the characters depending on your choices. Some just simply want their phone fixed for pretty wholesome reasons, but some want a little more than that, sometimes borderline illegal…and might even enlist your help for it.
It’s not just the customers, but even the non-customers that come visit your shop to add some spice to your life, like Mr. X from the ultra-secret Department 7. In the name of government justice, you can live a cool double life of a phone repair technician and a secret undercover agent all in one. Feed the government some juicy information about your customers, and get rewarded handsomely for it. You can even see the results of your hard work through the news on your store television. Sold the information and contacts of a businessman embezzling funds for shady politicians? Good for you that the perpetrator is caught, but taxes are increased to try and fix the hole that they left behind—and that is only one example of a string of events that stem from you and your actions. Scenarios like that make Repair This! more fascinating to play.
Pop culture references were everywhere as well, which was entertaining. Although, regrettably, I was unable to identify most of these references, it was amusing to see Michael Jackson coming in for a phone repair and Detroit: Become Human’s android agent Connor talking to my little AI assistant Larise. Sheldon Cooper of the Big Bang Theory and Kang Saebyeok of Squid Game also made appearances, among others.
But as a business simulation game, a bit of economics is also added into the mix—after all, you’re running a phone repair business, not a phone repair charity. Earn coins as you fulfill the repair requests to get closer to your one true goal, which you choose early on. Start up a new business somewhere else, or treat yourself to a well-deserved vacation? Either way, you’d need those green bills to get you anywhere, and you have to maneuver through customers who leave bad reviews if you don’t give them the price they want, which can get rather frustrating. While there were some outliers like the wealthy ones who you could easily charge the most expensive price point to max out your earnings, it was still challenging to find the right balance between making a good profit and satisfying the more average customers’ needs.
Repair This! is a pretty decent and fun game to play with, but it does have its letdowns. For one thing, the English localization did leave much to be desired. It doesn’t totally dampen the game experience, but it definitely will distract you with its awkwardness. Customers call your repair shop a salon, which might be because the original word is lost in translation, but other things just sound off and are not translated well. It can be rather funny to see, but considering this is a full release game, there could have been more work done to make it a little better.
Another gripe I have with it is that the game is rather short, as you only have about three weeks or 24 in-game days to play the game before Mr. Lee, your insufferable landlord, kicks you out for good. He immediately tells you this situation a few days after you start your business that you have to get out after three weeks because your space is getting bought out. Oh boy. Some players may like the shortness, some may not. I’m more for the latter, where I would have liked to see more of the story unfold and see more where my under-the-table deals take me. But, I suppose you can’t have everything.
Nonetheless, I think Repair This is a fun game that’s sure to keep you entertained. While it doesn’t hold a candle to other more polished indie games like Stardew Valley and Papers Please (the latter of which it is rather reminiscent of), it stands out from the rest with a pretty interesting premise, humorous characters, and its replayability.
Pros of Repair This!
| Things Repair This! Got Right |
|---|
|
Large Cast Of Characters Intriguing Storyline Simple But Challenging Gameplay |
Large Cast of Characters
There were a large range of unique customers that come over and visit your shop, from simple farm hands who need their cell phone fixed to be able to call family and friends, to an ultra-rich lady from a powerful family snooping in on her daughter’s mobile and even pays you extra to do so. Even when you start the day over, you won’t get the exact set of customers as you did in your previous playthrough of the same day. Some aren’t even customers, like the toaster guy, but they’re pretty much for comical relief which is nice.
Intriguing Storyline
While the story starts out with the cliché “country bumpkin fulfills dreams in a big city”-type, it gets more engaging when the game hurls more random events and choices at you, which affect the story as a whole as well. It’s pretty fun to try and experience all the endings, along with the numerous side narratives from the different characters which you’d need to piece together depending on how you play the game.
Simple but Challenging Gameplay
The repairing gameplay is simple to understand and pretty straightforward in its routine nature—talk to customers, fix phones, get paid, and repeat it again. However, what’s challenging is the business management aspect of it where you’d need to manage stock of phone parts, electricity bills, rent, and negotiations with your own customers to maximize your earnings as much as you can.
Cons of Repair This!
| Things That Repair This! Can Improve |
|---|
|
Imperfect English Translation Short, Could Be Longer |
Imperfect English Translation
As the game was made and written in Russian, the English localization feels a little off to native English speakers. The customers end up calling your phone repair shop a salon, an establishment most people would connect to hairdressing and manicures. A number of the reviews you get from the customers are also worded strangely, as well as the messages you get for under-the-table shady deals, and even the dialogue from the customers can be kind of wonky. There was even a news story where it literally says “Not Translated” in its subtitle, which slightly breaks the immersion. Some grammatical errors and punctuation errors were present as well.
Short, Could Be Longer
While there is the replayability aspect with the different storylines, I believe the game could have benefited if it had been a little longer and more fleshed out. It’s a decent game packed with fun for an afternoon or two, but there could be so much more added to it. It built a solid foundation with the phone-technician-slash-secret-agent concept, but the game is just too short to fully bring out that idea. After you finish the game, it just ends there, save for a replay run. While the developer has expressed their desire and motivation to add more content to the game, for now it’s short as is.
Is Repair This! Worth It?
It’s Worth It For The Content
Repair This! is a pretty satisfactory game that’s worth it for its replayability, multiple endings and story branches, simple gameplay, and vibrant cast of quirky characters that are unique in their own way. The gameplay is simple enough to understand and get the hang of, while also posing a challenge in the form of managing your own business. If you want to play a business simulator game as a phone technician with some elements of espionage, Repair This! is the game for you.
| Platform | Price |
|---|---|
| Steam |
$11.99 |
Repair This! FAQ
How long does it take to finish Repair This?
Repair This can be finished within three to five hours for one playthrough, and can stretch to ten hours or more if replaying for its other endings and content.
Is Repair This available on mobile?
As of writing, Repair This is strictly a PC only game, available to play on Windows and MacOS.
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Repair This! Product Information
 |
|
| Title | Repair This! |
|---|---|
| Release Date | April 19, 2024 |
| Developer | hgiSoft |
| Publisher | hgiSoft |
| Supported Platforms | PC (Windows, MacOS) |
| Genre | Indie, Simulation |
| Number of Players | 1 |
| ESRB Rating | RP |
| Official Website | Repair This! Website |
