A goofy and satirical drug dealer simulator topped the Steam Charts in April, marking a win for gamers against the worrying trend of increasingly overpriced AAA releases.
What is Schedule 1 About?
Schedule 1 is a crime simulator game about manufacturing and selling drugs to grow a criminal empire. Schedule 1 was made by Tyler’s Video Game Studio (TVGS). The sole developer, Tyler, started this project in 2022 as a small indie game with a niche community, and recently released it on March 24, 2025 on Steam to a positive and welcoming reception from a wider audience.
Schedule 1 Gameplay Synopsis
Schedule 1 has two core elements: production and distribution. Production is all about resource management, creating new products, and optimizing your manufacturing space to make large volumes of high quality product. Distribution is about building a network of customers to buy your product and dealers to sell your product.
Smoke weed every day.
Your basic farm starts off with a couple grow tents for marijuana in a small motel room. You harvest the buds, package them into plastic baggies, and run around offering the townsfolk deals on your weed. After accumulating some wealth, you can upgrade your housing space into an apartment, set up more grow tents, and hire a local dealer to push your product.
Progress quickly compounds as you produce more and begin mixing different ingredients bought from the gas station into your products. Mixing certain ingredients together increases the addictiveness of products and unlocks recipes for new strains that give different effects when consumed. Customers have individual preferences for effects, so catering your product to customer needs allows you to sell more volume at a higher price.
We need to cook.
As you accumulate more wealth, you can upgrade your manufacturing operations to produce meth and cocaine. These products require more equipment and machinery to produce, so saving up for big purchases is required to unlock larger buildings to set up your operation in, buying more ingredients, and paying daily salary workers to automate the entire process. The late stage of the game is peak satisfaction of the simulator genre as you sit back, relax, and watch a coca seed get turned into a brick of cocaine. Then you send it off to your widespread network of local dealers and clean your cash using laundering operations through different businesses in town.
Day Cycle and Police Curfew
In Schedule 1, each in game day lasts from 7am to 4am, with every minute counting as a real time second. Along with resource management there is a time management angle to produce product and complete deals with customers before they get impatient and cancel. To progress to the next day, you have to go to sleep in a bed. But be wary, as each evening starts with a strict police curfew during which cops patrol the streets and give pursuit if they see you. Getting caught means losing all your illicit gains and any product you were holding in your inventory.
Atmosphere of Humor and Satire
Schedule 1 is like if Jesse Pinkman and his Blue Sky Crew from Breaking Bad had their own successful meth empire. In his first appearance on the show, Jesse mentions his meth cook moniker, “Cap’n Cook” and his signature chili powder mixed meth. Its a hilariously absurd concept in the otherwise serious drama of Breaking Bad, but fits right into the unserious and satirical atmosphere of Schedule 1. In fact, you can actually mix chili powder with meth and sell it to your customers. Consuming mixed products gives you and your customers different effects, ranging from glowing eyes and losing your hair to turning orange and becoming electrified. The game uses parody language for the names of its businesses, like “Taco Ticklers”, its eccentric customers, the internet humor graffiti and advertisements scattered throughout town, and randomly generated names for newly mixed products.
A Fun and Rewarding Gameplay Loop
At its core, Schedule 1 is a resource management simulator similar to other games in its genre. You start off with nothing, manually grow and sell your product, and then gradually upgrade towards automation. The progress is generally fast and rewarding, however as of now, the game is unfinished, so there is a content ceiling that slows down progression and requires a bit of grinding to complete. Nevertheless, there is much to explore and toy around with before reaching this ceiling, especially if you play the co-op mode with friends.
Schedule 1 Topped the Gaming Charts
Schedule 1 released on Steam on March 24, 2025 and peaked 412,713 players by the end of the month. Word spread quickly among friends and social media, leading to an all time peak of 455,652 players in April and becoming the highest-grossing paid product on Steam on its release week. As of May, nearly 170,000 Steam reviews have been posted with the overall consensus being overwhelmingly positive.
I found out about Schedule 1 through a friend who saw a streamer play it. So we decided to try the free game demo, cheekily titled Schedule 1: Free Sample, which contained the entire first arc of progression of the paid version. We were having so much fun that when a window popped up letting us know we had hit the end of the free trial, we immediately alt tabbed to Steam to purchase the full game. Schedule 1 is a game that speaks for itself. Tyler let the community and content creators just have fun and post discussions and clips online, skyrocketing the game’s popularity primarily by word of mouth.
Many players were impressed by how enjoyable the game was despite being made by a single person. Schedule 1 made waves across social media as people were quick to call out AAA game studios for their lack of effort and engagement in comparison. The current trend of AAA games in the past decade has been a high priority concern of gamers as AAA prices have skyrocketed from $60 to nearly $100 while game quality has remained stagnant. Day 1 patches and invasive microtransactions have become the norm as greedy companies chase profits and try to recreate golden goose IPs such as Fortnite, Overwatch, and Marvel Rivals. Relative to multimillion dollar backed games, Schedule 1 is very basic, yet it proves that games don’t need jaw-dropping graphics and complicated gameplay mechanics to sell. Games just have to be fun, and Schedule 1 is successful because it is fun.
Schedule 1 Updates and Future Content
Tyler expressed in a launch livestream that he expects the complete 1.0 version of Schedule 1 to come out in 2-3 years as he incrementally adds new content and gauges feedback from the players. Tyler plans to periodically update the game and has already released more content over this past April. On his release announcement he laid out a content roadmap featuring in progress work, monthly content update ideas, and more. Tyler has expressed his gratitude for the vast community that supported him during development and after release, and intends to run polls so players can vote on new content updates and shape the final version of the game.
Schedule 1 Review and Final Thoughts
4.5/5
The gameplay loop is satisfying and the game content is diverse and enjoyable. Schedule 1 is simply fun. The game can be played alone or with friends, and bugs/crashes are minimal. As with most simulator games, Schedule 1’s progression slows down near its content ceiling and becomes increasingly repetitive. However, the game is not finished and the developer has promised more expansive content updates, so there is more fun to come.
Schedule 1 is available for PC on Steam for $19.99.
SUPERWILD 