There is something inherently unsettling about a convenience store at 3 a.m. The buzzing lights, the empty parking lot, the feeling that you’re the only awake soul in a frozen world. HELLMART, developed and published by GAZE IN GAMES, takes that familiar late-night discomfort and twists it into a clever hybrid of supermarket simulator and psychological horror. The result is a tense, often nerve-shredding experience that asks a simple question: how long could you keep doing a minimum-wage job if the devil himself was a regular customer?
A Job From Hell – Literally
The premise is immediately effective. You play a clerk working a 24-hour convenience store somewhere in the Far North, tasked with surviving a full seven-day shift cycle. During daylight hours, HELLMART feels almost cozy: you scan groceries, restock shelves, mop dirty footprints, and try to meet your daily sales quota. It’s routine, mundane, and oddly satisfying in the way good job simulators tend to be.
But as evening approaches, the tone begins to curdle. The generator flickers. The wind howls outside. Customers start acting… wrong. By nightfall the game has fully transformed from retail sim into survival horror, forcing you to barricade doors, monitor security cameras, and decide which desperate strangers are safe to let inside.
That slow transformation is HELLMART’s greatest trick. It doesn’t throw monsters at you immediately; it makes you care about the store first. You learn the layout, you stress about inventory, you feel proud when the shelves look tidy—and then the game weaponizes that attachment.
Gameplay: Mop, Scan, Pray
Mechanically, HELLMART is split into three distinct phases: day, evening, and night.
Daytime is all about simulation. You:
- work the register,
- keep the store clean,
- restock products,
- stay polite to customers,
- and hit corporate sales targets.
These systems are surprisingly robust. Items need proper placement, trash attracts complaints, and rude behavior can affect your income. It captures the quiet pressure of service work better than expected, and the repetitive tasks build a rhythm that lulls you into complacency.
Evening shifts toward preparation. You must:
- watch the generator fuel,
- buy supplies,
- upgrade security,
- barricade entrances,
- check the cameras.
This phase feels like the tightening of a noose. Resources are limited, upgrades are expensive, and you’re never quite sure what you’ll need for the coming night.
Night is where HELLMART shows its teeth. Late-night customers arrive with bizarre requests, impossible appearances, and stories that don’t add up. Evil tries to trick you—sometimes mimicking normal shoppers, sometimes begging to be let in. Your choices determine who lives, who dies, and which of the game’s three endings you’ll reach.
The decision system is simple but effective. Do you open the door for a shivering man who claims something is chasing him? Do you refuse service to a woman whose shadow moves the wrong way? There are no clear answers, only consequences.
Atmosphere Over Jump Scares
HELLMART understands that true horror is anticipation. The game uses sound design brilliantly: the hum of refrigerators, the squeak of automatic doors, the distant crunch of footsteps on snow. Long stretches pass where nothing happens—and those stretches are terrifying.
Visually, the game opts for gritty realism rather than stylized monsters. Fluorescent lighting feels sickly, the parking lot is swallowed by darkness, and the store itself becomes a fragile island of safety. When something finally does happen, it hits hard because the environment has done so much of the work.
The “strange customers” system keeps each playthrough unpredictable. Some visitors are harmless but unsettling; others are outright threats testing whether you’ve maintained defenses. No two nights feel exactly the same, giving the game strong replay value.
Morality at Minimum Wage
One of the most interesting elements is how HELLMART ties horror to everyday ethics. Corporate rules say “DON’T BE RUDE TO CUSTOMERS,” but what if a customer clearly isn’t human? The game constantly pits empathy against self-preservation.
Your actions genuinely matter. Turning someone away might save your life but doom an innocent person outside. Letting the wrong individual in can lead to catastrophic consequences. These dilemmas elevate HELLMART beyond a simple scare generator into something closer to interactive moral horror.
Rough Edges in Aisle Three
Not everything on the shelves is perfectly stocked. The simulation side, while immersive, can become repetitive, especially on longer sessions. Some tasks—like cleaning the surrounding area—feel more like busywork than meaningful gameplay.
AI behaviors occasionally break immersion, with customers getting stuck or repeating lines too often. A few scripted scares rely on trial and error rather than intuition, which can be frustrating when a “wrong” decision isn’t clearly telegraphed.
Performance is generally solid, but the interface could use quality-of-life improvements. Managing upgrades and inventory during tense moments sometimes feels clunkier than it should.
Why It Works
Despite those issues, HELLMART succeeds because it understands the psychology of both retail and fear. It makes the ordinary threatening without ever abandoning its simulation roots. You’re not a soldier or a detective—you’re just an exhausted clerk trying to survive until payday, and that vulnerability is powerful.
The three-ending structure encourages multiple runs, and noticing new details on repeat playthroughs is deeply satisfying. What seemed random on night two might reveal a pattern on night five. The store slowly becomes a character in itself—your fortress, your prison, your only hope.
Final Checkout
HELLMART is an inventive fusion of genres that shouldn’t work together but absolutely do. By blending the mundane stress of customer service with creeping supernatural dread, GAZE IN GAMES has created something distinctive and memorable. It’s not the flashiest horror title, but it might be one of the most unsettling—because it feels just close enough to real life.
