I find it endlessly fascinating how vast the world of job simulator games is. Games, after all, give us some measure of escapism and the ability to live out a life other than our own. They present the opportunity to explore the cosmos, relive the past, or simply solve an endless array of puzzles, all as a way to grant some degree of relief from the drudgery of our mundane, everyday lives. The fact that so many games offering some sense of roleplay and escapism sell so well is a testament to how much desire there is for that escape. We play to be someone we’re not.

Why, then, is there a vast empire of truck simulator or construction simulator or any of the other myriad of games providing the experience of a job? Who are these people who leave their jobs, sit at their computer, exhausted and needing to relax, and decide the best way to do so is to load up a game that gives them a job?

Well, me, for one.

Getting into bidding wars with vaguely racist stereotypes is 100% my day job

Barn Finders exists in a nebulous area of job sims, to the point where I full expect someone to argue with me that it isn’t a job sim at all. The examples I listed above of truck sims or bus sims or what have you try to emulate their jobs as closely as possible and to provide as realistic an experience as possible. Barn Finders, I’d argue, does something similar, but with the understanding that the job it is emulating is one that exists in a world of fantasy. There is no actual place Barn Finders is trying to emulate, but there is the experience of opening a door and finding something that looks like treasure if you squint hard enough on the other side. Barn Finders emulates the feeling of being a combination antiques dealer, scrap vendor, and storage unit hawk, all in one.

In Barn Finders, you play as one of a pair of barn finders. You travel out to a variety of locations, ostensibly to find a specific item for a client, but really, just to scour them for valuables and make out like a bandit. When not wandering around others’ property, you repair, clean, and reassemble your treasures before popping them into your shop to pawn off on the nearest unsuspecting customer.

“Some may call this junk. Me, I call it treasures.”

Barn Finders does not have a complex game loop. Indeed, the satisfaction of playing it comes not necessarily from managing a shop or setting prices. Prices are set automatically, and the player’s only real input in them is a haggling mini-game. The player also doesn’t have much space to customise the shop itself. While there are wallpapers and floor tiles in abundance, the shelf layout is always the same, and the materials stocking them will always be what you’ve scavenged in your various barn forays. The shop itself only really exists to pass time between the barn levels, and as a way to fund them.

It is these barn explorations that are the heart of the game. Each location provides a new setting and a new collection of items to scrounge up. Through the liberal applications of axes, lockpicks, and shovels, the player is given the opportunity to explore every nook and cranny, discovering increasingly weird stories and objects, all of which are promptly stacked in the back of a truck to be sold. There is no reverence for location here. Each location is just a profit needing to be unearthed. Your job is to do precisely that.

Pictured: Profit

While Barn Finders does have a story - which I will not spoil for you, because it is special - the story is thin at best. If it were removed entirely, nothing of value would be lost, other than perhaps something to actually tie the character to where they end up. The graphics, too, are nothing spectacular, with the various people perusing your shop being little more than 3D models with some occasionally questionable gestures. The game relies solely on the power of joy at finding something interesting, and it’s successful for it.

That said, it can be difficult to look past the setting the game chooses to create for these barns. The game takes place in a fictional world called “Ameryka,” that - according to its opening text - is not unlike actual America. Though there are many American stereotypes, and especially stereotypes of the American South, the game veers uncomfortably close to racist caricatures more times than I care to keep track of. It adds a tinge of malicious unpleasantness to the game that makes the shop sections even harder to slog through. I play this game for the item finding, and I put up with the shop so I can get there.

It is a nice horse, though.

The appeal of Barn Finders, then, is precisely that it is a job simulator, albeit for a job I do not and never will have. I enjoy rummaging through junk for the treasure I know must be there. I enjoy hosing down a dirty object until it shines, and I enjoy delicately reassembling a frog circus. There is an escapism in the mundane, just as there is with the fantastic, because in the mundane, we see the possible. I can imagine myself repairing something and showing it off, and I can imagine myself finding something cool.

It’s that unique escapism that has me enjoying Barn Finders, even while I recognise its many, many other flaws. Parts of the game are a slog, but the ones that are not fit their particular niche perfectly.

Developer: Duality Games

Genre: Simulation, Job Sim

Year: 2020

Country: Poland

Language: English

Play Time: 10-14 Hours

Youtube: https://youtu.be/6wZ3blWaR6Y