Developed by SifDev, Toll Booth Simulator looks downright bizarre on paper, but somehow turns a weird idea into a somewhat fun gameplay loop. As the name suggests, you’re tasked with running a toll booth in the middle of the desert; checking passports taking payments, and slowly building up enough money to pay off a debt and avoid prison time.

It’s an odd setup, but for the first hour or so I’ll admit that I was actually drawn in. However, the longer I spent with it, the more it started to feel like something I’d already played before….just not half as good.

A Weird Concoction of Ideas

At its core, the game is about managing your toll booth. Cars roll up, you check documents, take cash and decide who gets through and who doesn’t. It’s simple and offers a little satisfaction once you fall into the rhythm.

It doesn’t stop there, though. Very quickly the game throws in farming mechanics – you’re planting seeds, growing fruit, and using it to make mocktails you can sell for extra profit.

And this is where it starts to feel…familiar.

The whole setup (aside from the toll booth) – growing produce in a confined space (in this case an RV), turning it into something to sell and then gradually expand your operation – feels heavily lifted from the great Schedule 1. It’s not subtle either; it’s so in your face that it’s hard not to notice,

The Rinse and Repeat Routine of Toll Booth Simulator

There is a discernable loop here, and to be fair, it works at a basic level. You check cars, earn money, grow fruit, make drinks, sell them, and repeat.

The issue is just how quickly it becomes repetitive.

After a couple of runs, I found myself doing the exact same actions over and over with very little variation to break things up. There’s no real sense of progression beyond making even more money slightly faster, and nothing new is introduced often enough to keep things interesting.

It all ends up feeling like busywork rather than something you actually want to keep playing.

Ideas Borrowed, Never Improved

It’s hard to ignore just how much this game feels like it’s borrowing from elsewhere. The farming setup, the product creation, and many other elements – are straight from a vastly popular title. They don’t even add anything meaningful on top.

Even the character design is mirroring Schedule 1. The main problem with Toll Booth Simulator is that it doesn’t even try to establish its own identity.

Toll Booth Simulator Never Quite Evolves

One of the biggest issues I had was how little the game changes over time. You start with a simple setup, and even hours later you’re more or less doing the same thing.

There’s no real moment where the game opens up or introduces something new that changes how you play. Instead, it just asks you to keep repeating the same loop, just slightly quicker the more you play.

That might work if the core mechanics were stronger, but here it just highlights how shallow things are.

Summary

Toll Booth Simulator isn’t completely broken – it functions, it has a clear loop, and there are moments where it almost clicks. But it never really gets beyond this.

For me, it felt like a collection of ideas that worked well in other games, brought together without adding any thing particularly new or engaging. The repetition sets in quickly, and once it does there’s very little to pull you back.

Toll Booth Simulator is out now and available on the Steam Store, if you want to see for yourself.