The Closing Shift | 閉店事件 is a paid simulation game from Chilla’s Art. This first-person horror game lets you experience being a barista working the night shift. What seems like a normal closing shift job becomes a fight for survival as a stalker makes the five-day experience more and more dangerous with each passing day.

What makes The Closing Shift | 閉店事件 additionally scary is that it uses a VHS film aesthetic that lends a found-footage feel to the game. The second is that it is grounded in real-world concerns. It feels similar to The Convenience Store or Five Nights at Freddy’s.

Barista sim gone wrong

In The Closing Shift | 閉店事件, you experience the common life of a cafe employee. A superior nags at you for coming in late, and you get to assemble orders for customers—mix drinks, attach lids, and slap stickers at people who come and go. There’s even a reference whiteboard in the staff room. It gets increasingly creepy though, as a stalker character remains in the background all throughout.

It lets you experience even the mundane parts of the job such as taking out the trash and manually closing the store, presented as a series of in-game quests. It even feels relaxing and calming, partly because of its VHS film aesthetic making it feel like you’re reliving someone’s memory. Additionally, it lets you relive the experience without having to repeat entire playthroughs, thanks to the autosave feature.

Without spoiling the content, the game offers different ending scenarios, from the outright bad ending to a surprise twist ending. As a horror game, it might feel like a slow-burn experience where the first part is a calming cafe sim and the last part is a rapidly-developing survival horror aspect. It messes up with the player, making them think if there was something that could’ve been done differently.

Short yet memorable

If there’s anything The Closing Shift | 閉店事件 leaves with the players, it’s the real-world fears of working alone and having to confront stalkers. As a game though, it feels like two disparate games that merge and make sense together at the end, all while leaving the player a helpless witness to what happens next. Still, you can’t enjoy that nice barista sim without seeing how you’ll end up. Recommended.