Definitely Not Fried Chicken Early Access review – Quite the appetizer

Management games are a dime a dozen, with steam listing over 1300 titles just under the “Resource Management” tag alone. Developer Dope Games, which is appropriately named, introduces its own spin to the genre with Definitely Not Fried Chicken, where players will have to run multiple legitimate businesses while also trying to launch their own illicit trades underneath.

This game is unlike other simulators in that players will have to deal with rival competition that can actually destroy your equipment and get rid of your workers. Even following the tutorial, it can be hard to get started in this city of bustling opportunities. There’s a steep learning curve and if you don’t know how to make money, you’ll be bankrupt before you know it.

Getting started in the drug trade

When you first start the game with the tutorial enabled, you’ll begin working in a certain Kentucky-fried Major’s restaurant, where you’ll learn the basics of a legitimate business. This is a good introduction to the business part of the world and helps you become familiar with one of the primary antagonists. While you eventually get fired, this is enjoyable and makes the city feel a little more alive.

After this, you’ll be introduced to a derelict park that the city has chosen to sell to the highest bidder. This will work as your drug factory, where you will process all of your illicit substances. This works by purchasing one plot after the other, with you getting two free plots at the start of every game. After that, the price gets incrementally higher. You’ll need to maximize space or you’re going to have a bad time.

Once the tutorial concludes and you know how to create a new drug station, you should also make sure that your early factory also has room for the amenities that your employees will come to expect. The game doesn’t tell you this, but your employees will starve, get sick, or likely die of exhaustion because of it. They still might die early on, which is frustrating, but adding these resources will slow the decline.

After the tutorial sets you loose in the game, it can be really hard to get started. Unfortunately, the player can only make single deliveries at a time starting out. Since every order requires you to deliver eight parcels per, it takes forever to get one deal done, even with multiple drivers. Some are timed for 15 hours in-game, and those seem impossible early on unless you dedicate your whole force to that one delivery.

Something else that’s frustrating is that in order to buy better equipment, like a car that can hold four boxes, you have to make around 30 to 45 deliveries to a Scrapyard before you can even unlock it. These feel like they’re meant to make the game last longer and it’s incredibly frustrating starting out. Upgrading to better Cannabis by delivering to the university can help improve the quality of each delivery, but this isn’t immediately apparent.

Running low on green

In the time it takes you to get to a place where your business is profitable, it’s completely possible that you will go bankrupt. Starting out you have to buy all the buildings, the equipment, and the staff, all of which will take a large chunk out of your initial capital. After that, you’ll pay a daily salary to your employees on top of replacing any that are hurt due to the competition.

One option for this is to hire employees as you need them, especially early in the game, because your shelves will get backed up due to how slow the moped drivers are. At that point, your workers will wander aimlessly until the drivers come back and they need to load the next shipment. When your factory is the slowest, it might be smart to cut down to one worker for shipping and one for producing per substance.

Once you upgrade to the only other vehicle in the game, the Car, you’ll be able to complete deliveries in two trips and earn money much faster. It may be worth waiting until this point before you start building other legitimate businesses, as it’s too much to spend until you know you’re going to be in a consistently profitable situation.

Legitimate businesses are a great way to earn passive income, but supplying them with equipment and employees will cost you before you start making money. You’ll also need a specific business license for each new industry, so make sure you’re choosing where to start carefully. The best location to start with is a laundromat since cannabis is a preferred substance to traffic through that business.

Snug as a bug in my drugs

The game is in early access, which means that players should come to expect unpolished aspects and features that aren’t implemented yet. There looks to be a lot of promising upgrades and content coming to the game in the future, with a large number of items in each section having an “EA” indicator to show they’re coming in early access. This is fine, as the game provides content to keep you busy for hours.

However, there are a number of bugs that players should be aware of in the game’s current state. There was a game-breaking bug I encountered where my employees would just stop putting delivering on the moped drivers. This led to my workforce just stopping work completely, as there was no more room on the shelves and no one wanted to load the mopeds. This happened hours into two separate games.

There were other smaller bugs where characters would get stuck behind doors, which actually saved one guy from being murdered during a raid. There’s also this weird beeping that happens every so often from the game that sounds like a mix between a grocery scanner and a heart monitor. It happens periodically, but only enough that you occasionally think “Was that part of the game?”

Our Definitely Not Chicken review was written based on the PC version of the game. Find more detailed looks at popular and upcoming titles in the Game Reviews section of our website!