Schedule 1 is the best life sim I've played in years, partly because it reminds me of the greatest mode in Garry's Mod

Schedule 1 is all about the little things. Skating aimlessly at sunset, absent-mindedly jumping over curbs and down concrete stairs. Playing Pong and Snake on the TV of your seedy motel room. Getting up to draw the curtains of said motel room shut, stained fabric alleviating the constant paranoia that somebody will see what you're doing in there. You know – the little things.

Since launching in late March, Schedule 1 has quickly become Steam's latest breakout darling. The indie drug-dealing simulator is the platform's fourth most-played game at time of writing, sitting comfortably above the likes of Monster Hunter Wilds and Marvel Rivals, with a whopping 122,500 players on a Tuesday morning. At first glance, it looks like a joke left to run its course – the sort of game you would expect to either watch a streamer play, or pick up yourself for a few hours of fun before never touching it again.

But it's not nearly as shallow as it seems. It's a committed exploration of the emergent routines that have made role-play in Garry's Mod and GTA 5 so popular – and in doing so, offers the best simulator experience I've played in a long time.

Cooking up a storm

Your first hours in Schedule 1 are spent in drifting, sleazy nothingness. After arriving in the city of Hyland Point, fresh from having your RV burned down by fellow pharmaceutical enthusiasts, you've got just enough cash to rent a motel room – only for a week, mind you – and supplies to grow a small amount of weed.

The goal is to build your business from the ground-up. At first, this means growing and dealing for a small clientele, all while saving up to buy a grubby apartment above a nearby Chinese restaurant. From there you can grow your customer base, hire dealers to save you hot-footing around town, and get into significantly harder drugs. But Schedule 1 could be about anything – a plumbing sim, carpentry RPG, you name it – and it would still be fun, thanks to the way it frames near-ritualistic busywork within a limited timeframe each day.

Much of your day-to-day work in Schedule 1 offers the same tactile satisfaction as popping bubble wrap. Putting soil into a pot means cutting open the bag and physically turning it until soil actually pours out. Watering your plants works the same. Buds are harvested individually with single satisfying snips, though you'll need to rotate each plant around to see them all. Packaging the produce means dragging and dropping nuggets into individual bags. Your trash builds up, and needs to be emptied into a bin bag before being hauled outside.

I don't condone the protagonist's career choices, but it's brilliantly engaging to the point where I could take or leave the narcotics angle. Yes, I'd happily put the same effort into running an above-board flower shop.

My favorite part of Schedule 1 has quickly become bumming around the city, guided by loose responsibilities but rarely in a real rush. I might have to cut across town to make a few deals – for which you can schedule a time by texting the customer – or nip out to buy more soil, but there's no pressure to conform to a grander pace. I'm playing with two friends, and a few days after moving out of the motel we all bought ourselves skateboards as a reward. The rest of that afternoon was spent cruising and attempting increasingly silly tricks, with little thought paid to our burgeoning business.

Schedule 1 turns living day-by-day into a joy – a feat that few games manage. A recent example is Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2, but even that borders on being too exciting to fit neatly, as Henry's day-to-day involves frantic swordfights and horseback rides through gorgeous medieval scenery. Interestingly, Schedule 1's closest relatives are player-made. GTA RP, modded community servers for Grand Theft Auto 5 where the goal is to simply get by in Los Santos, is made of the same bones. So is Dark RP: a sandbox mode on Garry's Mod which lets you select a job and buy property, but otherwise leaves the burden of making it fun up to players.

Of the 460 hours I've sunk into Garry's Mod, the vast majority of that has been in Dark. Some of those sessions were spent running for mayor, others spent running illegal money-printing operations from swanky penthouses. But, as in Schedule 1, the real meat of Dark RP belongs in the idling, of existing within a role and creating purpose. That's why my favorite part of Schedule 1 isn't the not-so glamorous sleaze of dealing, or even seeing hard work pay off with a bulging bank account.

Instead, the features which don't really need to be there are the ones I love most. It's the small additions which make Schedule 1 feel lived-in. It's having to take out the trash each night. It's trying to get home before curfew, but going the long way to visit the hill I like skating down. It's opening the shutters at 7am and peering out at the city as it wakes up. You know – the little things.

While Schedule 1 remains in early access, our new games 2025 list rounds up everything else coming our way this year