When you roll into a dusty desert town to crash at your uncle’s ranch, it seems like the perfect time to relax. Everything’s fine. He’s got a great business, too — until the feds bust him for running a less-than-legal side hustle. Now you’re on the run, heading toward a nowhere town called Hyland Point in a beat-up RV, hoping to disappear. But the local cartel has other plans. After your RV gets blown sky-high in a hit, you’re broke, stranded and hiding out in a rundown motel with a growing list of enemies.
Welcome to Schedule I, a gritty, offbeat survival game that’s equal parts crime drama and chaotic sandbox. It’s weird, wild and it just might be your next gaming obsession.
The Early Access game is at the top of Steam’s bestsellers list right now, where it’s remained for the past week. According to SteamDB, the game pulled in 116,408 concurrent players within 24 hours of its release on March 24. The next day? 142,000. By March 30, it hit a peak of 414,166. That puts Schedule I in the top five most-played games on Steam, right up there with the usual heavyweights like Dota 2. It even hit number one on the global top-sellers list. Not bad for a $20 debut title.
What is Schedule I about?
Schedule I is a new indie game about building a drug empire from the ground up, and it’s exploded in popularity since hitting Steam in Early Access on March 24. It throws players into the seedy underbelly of the drug trade as seen through a wacky cartoon lens. It’s easy to write it off as just another zany “meme” game, but play it for a bit and you’ll see Schedule I offers something truly special beneath the grime of the illegal drug trade.
You start small, dealing out of that dingy motel room in Hyland Point. Over time, you scale up-more drugs, more customers, more heat. You can grow cannabis, cook meth and manage your entire operation from production to street sales. You’ll need to hide your stash, watch out for cops and eventually build a full-blown empire.
But it’s not just about making a drop behind a building or meeting your client after a series of shady texts. You can mix your wares, too. What do you get when you mix a can of “Cuke” and marijuana? Well, it might get your customers into trouble, but it’ll carry a cool name or one that you decide to give it. And some strange traits that can get people hooked and coming back.
The cartoony visuals go a long way toward making the game feel seedy and shady and more like a lark. Characters look like they came out of an adult animated series — big eyes, absurd proportions, goofy expressions. That aesthetic softens the edge of what’s otherwise a pretty dark theme. Still, there are plenty of details: setting up lighting rigs for plant growth, tweaking formulas in makeshift drug labs and even laundering your profits.
Schedule I really shines in co-op mode. Up to four players can jump in together, each handling a part of the business — maybe one’s cooking while another sells and a third keeps lookout. It’s chaotic, messy and hilarious, especially when a deal goes south or the cops show up midbatch. You never quite know what’s going to happen next, and that’s part of the charm.
What makes Schedule I stand out?
Schedule I has lots of little absurd touches, too. You can knock out a rival dealer and stuff them in a recycling bin for pocket change, or get chased five blocks for carrying an extra gram. These interactions give the world personality and make it fun to explore, not just optimize. From Peggy, who wants to score something to take the edge off, to Peter, who’s hankering for something “toxic,” you’ll grow to love serving your wacky customer base and risking arrest by not returning home ahead of police curfew.
Streamers have latched on quickly to Schedule I. The co-op chaos and unpredictable street encounters make it perfect for Twitch and YouTube, and once the first few big creators went live, word spread fast. Steam reviews from customers hit 99% “Overwhelmingly Positive” on launch day.
The developer, TVGS (short for Tyler’s Video Game Studio), is a solo dev based in Sydney. This is its first major release, but despite all the long hours and late nights, the developers have been active with players, promising monthly updates and tweaks based on community feedback. The game roadmap even includes new drug types, expanded systems and more tools for empire-building.
For a game with no publisher, no real marketing push and a questionable premise for some gamers, Schedule I has pulled off one of the most impressive indie launches in years. It’s fun, it’s different and if the updates keep rolling (ahem), it’s probably just getting started.
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