Shelf Control
A downloadable game for Windows
Shelf Control
The night shift never ends
You are a night stocker at a supermarket that should be empty. Your job is simple: restock the shelves before the store opens. The list is on the clipboard. The products are in the back room. You know what you're supposed to do.
What you don't know is what else is in here with you.
- Restock Jam
- Restock Pudding
- Restock Sugar
- Restock Crackers
- Restock Ketchup
- Restock Eggs
- Restock Bread
- Restock Milk
THE SCANNER DOES NOT READ PRICES. IT READS WHAT IS LEFT OF YOU. — ◎
Sanity
There is no health bar. No UI. Your only diagnostic tool is a price gun — pull the trigger and read the label it prints. A normal price means you're still holding on. Something else means you're not.
Inspired by Mortuary Assistant's sanity design — the player becomes aware of their own deterioration through the world, not through a meter on screen.
Sanity drops under flickering lights, in total darkness, or when something watches you too long. It recovers with small comforts: a coffee cup left on a break room table, a sticky note from a coworker who didn't show up tonight, a speaker playing something almost calming.
You are not alone in here
ENTITY · 001
Lich THREAT LEVEL: HIGH
A deformed humanoid figure that patrols the aisles. It reacts to your sanity — the lower you fall, the more aggressively it hunts. When sanity bottoms out completely, The Lich stops patrolling. It starts chasing. It doesn't stop.
ENTITY · 002
The eye THREAT LEVEL: PASSIVE
An eye. It appears without warning somewhere in the store, looking directly at you. If you hold eye contact for more than two seconds, it drains your sanity. Look away. Keep working. Pretend you didn't see it.
How a shift works
Task Loop
Each night begins in the back room with a clipboard. Find the products in the stockroom, locate the correct aisle, place them on the right shelf. Repeat until the store is ready — or until you can't.
The Environment
Lights flicker. Aisles look longer than they are. A shopping cart you didn't move has moved. Shelves don't always stay where you left them. The supermarket is not entirely cooperative.
The Clock
The store opens at dawn. You need to finish before then. Rushing means mistakes. Dawdling means more time in the dark. The pressure is constant, even when nothing is visibly wrong.
Recovery Items
Coffee cups. Encouraging notes left by coworkers. A radio playing soft music. Small anchors to reality scattered through the store — but never where you need them most.
Death & Retry
If Richard catches you, the shift resets. A brief narration explains what happened — your cause of death, a small tip. You are not the first person to work here at night.
Escalation
Each subsequent night introduces harder tasks, more aggressive behaviour, and fewer safe moments. The demo contains one full night with a complete sanity arc and both entities.
About this build
This demo was developed over roughly one month as a university vertical slice — a proof of concept for the game's core loop, atmosphere, and entity design. It contains one playable night in a partial recreation of the supermarket, with working sanity mechanics, basic AI for Richard, the Ojo Piojo encounter, and environmental storytelling throughout.
The project is not currently in active development. It is shared here as a portfolio piece and a snapshot of what the full game could become. Some systems are rough, some assets are placeholder, and the ending is abrupt. That's the nature of a vertical slice — it shows the dream, not the finished building.
Developed in Unreal Engine 5. Inspired by liminal aesthetics, found footage horror, and the specific dread of a supermarket at 3am.
References & Inspiration
- Mortuary Assistant — sanity design
- Fears to Fathom — found footage tension
- Order 13 — liminal environments
- R.E.P.O — cooperative horror loop
Built for
University Game Development Project
Vertical Slice · 2025
All assets, code, and design produced within the one-month development window unless otherwise noted.
SHELF CONTROL — UNIVERSITY DEMO — NOT IN ACTIVE DEVELOPMENT
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