Though not many of them are being sold, there are countless of “weird games” out there. And quite of a few of them got really popular at least in certain circles. From Revenge of the Sunfish, to Space Funeral or Goblet Grotto they tend to get people intrigued, whenever they could be considered “good” or “bad”. They’re just fascinating and it’s interesting to ponder their existence if not always play. Critters for Sale is something like that. It’s not particularly fun to play, but it is certainly fascinating.
The game is an adventure game/choose your own adventure type thing divided into several independent episodes. All episodes but 2 have multiple endings, depending on your choices, and the remaining 2 are more focused on simple, though not fun, puzzles. The main draw here is the visual style, the surreal storyline that mixes real world events and people with bizarre plot points and occasionally even does questionably legal things. The game does have a very curious visual style and the music tracks used or remixed are fitting. The plot doesn’t really matter, as it’s more of a collection of things that happen, even though there is a defined storyline going through the episodes. Either way, you’re here for the weird, not to analyze it.
But the gameplay here ranges from just being boring, to becoming outright obnoxious. To get all endings, you will have to fast forward through minutes of the same stuff. You cannot save inside an episode, which seems fine for all of them but the final one, where you will spend 10-20 minutes before you realize that you can finish it, unless you’ve seen special missable locations in special endings of other episodes that you can’t in turn finish without seeing all of the episodes first and then applying real world knowledge. So when you do, and you get the knowledge necessary, you’ll have to go through most of the tedium of that final episode yet again. The puzzles and mini-games, where they appear, are not fun, so much so that the developer has added a special option to skip them in one episode, where it’s necessary for one ending. Also, the visual presentation, while nice, will most definitely affect those who are susceptible to bright flashes, hence the warning at the start of the game.
All in all, it’s not really fun to play. But it is damn fascinating. If you have the patience, and a lot of it, and are interested in such curious weird titles, definitely check it out. But if you’re not, I doubt you will have a pleasant experience other than playing a few minutes, thinking “hah, that was weird” and then never playing the game again.