Market is Fine

Market is Fine is a supermarket simulation game with dark humour, where news changes prices and up to four players can run one store together online. You design a character, open the shop and deal with customers, deliveries, debt and a rival chain. You can also play alone, though co-op brings together one till, one pile of debt and friends who may not trust each other.

Run the supermarket

Stock shelves, fill fridges and arrange the store your way using more than 250 products and over 70 parody brands, including Keep Calm Gummies, Doomscroll Lime, Crisis Crisps and Panic Buy. At the 3D checkout, you scan barcodes, count change bill by bill and enter card payments. Credit tabs, bank loans, weekly bills, shoplifters and cleaning are also part of managing the store, and you can hire a cashier and a cleaner. MarketOS runs on the store’s PC, while the MIF Pad fits in your pocket; at the end of each day, a receipt marks the result PROFIT or LOSS.

Customers are cartoon characters with their own walks, problems and opinions about your prices. You can customize your character’s face, hair, skin, apron and accessories; the character you make in the lobby is the one you play in the store, including the arms visible in first person. A shift board assigns players as cashier, stockroom worker, courier, security or free agent, with alerts for each person’s job. Proximity voice chat carries between nearby players, is muffled by walls and echoes in the casino. A wheel offers dances and gestures such as horon, halay, zeybek, Robot Cashier, Breakdown, The Bill Came and Play Dead. Halay and horon dancers line up side by side, while customers stop to watch and heckle.

News and market changes

Each morning, MIF NEWS reports on events such as strikes, scandals and a supposed giant gummy bear reserve discovered underground. The wholesale price, shelf price and demand for goods mentioned in a story change immediately. The game includes 15 crises across 10 languages, with headlines written around each language’s country. An UNCONFIRMED badge warns that a story may be followed by a DEBUNKED bulletin, even after the stockroom is full; the casino also takes bets on whether a story will be debunked. You can check the Market Impact panel at any time to see what prices have changed and how long the effects will last.

Deliveries and daily work

Orders arrive by truck at the DEPO shutter in the back alley. The driver has limited patience: if you fall behind, he honks, starts charging a waiting fee and may leave with the remaining goods. Players pass boxes hand to hand or throw them to one another. Couriers ride bikes to DENIAL TOWERS, TOMORROW HOUSE and more than 60 other doors; an unlocked bike can be stolen. The whole block is walkable, including the back alley, courtyard and shops you can see into, with windows that light up at night.

At closing, TODAY’S AWARDS include Box Throwing Champion, Workplace Accident Specialist, King of the Till, Lightning Courier, the Casino’s Most Loyal Customer and Slacker of the Day. If you die, you enter dead chat, where only the dead can hear you; you return to the door the next morning.

Rival raids and secret theft

MEGAFINE, a rival chain down the road, responds to your growth with letters telling you to close the store. At noon, its purple-uniformed crew gathers outside. A cinematic standoff lets players vote on a response, choosing to provoke, bluff or suggest talking over tea; if the till has money, you can also offer a bribe. When negotiations end, a fight breaks out: shelves are swept, products fly, someone grabs a bat and someone may end up on the pavement. That evening, MIF NEWS airs the raid in slow motion from the security camera.

With at least three players, you can turn on Zimmet mode in the lobby. On news days, one player secretly becomes a traitor and can skim the till, pocket courier money, hide boxes in the camera-free DEPO, cut the lights or alter prices. Cameras identify people only by details such as “someone in a red shirt,” and customers may offer conflicting accounts. At closing, players use an evidence board and accusations to decide who is embezzling. If the traitor wins, the stolen money goes to their wallet; if the crew wins, it returns to the till. Either way, everyone meets at the same till the next morning.

The casino and back alley

The Bailout Casino across the street opens at six in the evening, with blackjack, slot machines and the month’s rent at stake. Big bets notify the whole crew. Onstage, a tired dancer stands beneath an LED sign showing her debt: tipping five dollars reduces it by five and earns a reluctant jazz hand, while she responds if the till cannot spare the money.

In the morning, a battered fruit truck brings the black-marketeer to the back alley, offering cheap goods with genuine packaging and questionable contents. The casino, courier routes and back-alley trade all sit within the walkable block.