Gas Station Simulator beginner’s guide, tips, and tricks

Where to even begin with Gas Station Simulator on PC, Playstation 4, and Xbox One? It’s a first-person sim where you run a gas station. Mostly. There’s a lot of sweeping, painting, pumping gas, and scanning sodas at the checkout. Sometimes there’s yeeting trash bags into a dumpster from across a parking lot. Oh, and you work for the mob.

There’s no way to prepare you to experience Gas Station Simulator, but here are our tips to get you started.

Learn to throw trash

Heaving trash is fun, first and foremost. And you can go for the high score by throwing from farther and farther away. More importantly, though, if you drop all your trash right at the front of the dumpster, it’ll pile up and seem more full than it is. Stand at the front and toss your trash into the skip to fill it from the back — you won't have to call for pickup as often that way.

Small trash goes in the can, big trash goes in the dumpster

Smaller trash — about watering can size and down — can fit in a trash can or a trash bag that you’ve equipped. Clicking on a full trash can with a trash bag equipped will turn it into a full bag of trash.

Everything else — including full trash bags — get carried to the dumpster by hand.

Everything is trash — except when it’s ammo

Speaking of trash: everything is trash and goes in the bin. You don’t need to save up anything. It’s all junk.

That said, there’s also a local troublemaker named Dennis who shows up to stink bomb your gas station and graffiti the walls. And the best way to get rid of him is to throw trash at him. Try to keep something nearby to chase him off.

Don’t neglect your sweeping

The thing about deserts and sand is that it’s coarse, rough, irritating, and it gets everywhere. You and your customers also track it into the store constantly. There’s even a meter in the upper left of your screen showing how dirty your floor has gotten.

With everything else going on — pumping gas, running the checkout, stocking the shelves, chasing hooligans, and driving RC cars (oh yeah, and working for the mob) — it’s easy to forget to sweep. If you forget for too long and your floor gets too dirty, though, you’ll start to lose customers.

Close the gas station to buy yourself time

There is so much going on beyond just running the gas station. There’s decorating, plowing sand with an excavator, breaking into car trunks with a lock pick, and that’s all before you discover the animatronic animal band in the warehouse.

Whenever you need to step away for a while, head to the sign out front and close the gas station for a bit. Don’t leave it off for too long — you still need to make money (you work for the mob, remember) — but use it to get stuff done elsewhere without the stress of customers showing up.

Never take it too seriously

Gas Station Simulator is a fever dream of a game. The chaos is the point. This isn’t a game for elite strats or min-maxing. Just sit back and soak in the absurdity.