Hands on with Drug Dealer Simulator 2 - Preview

Byterunners are a game development team from Poland that specializes in 3D graphics, asset creation and sound development as well as designing PC and mobile games, to be honest it was a little hard finding much information at all about these guys and gals, even on their official website but I have been a huge fan of them ever since they released Drug Dealer Simulator back in 2020, which judging from the reviews on Steam a lot of other people also liked as well. So, when I heard that they were releasing a sequel to the original game I got more excited than a tweeker after his last hit of meth, thanks to Byterunners we got our hands on an early version of the game to start building our drug empire.

In Drug Dealer Simulator 2 there have been some major changes with one of the most major ones being the scenery, you no longer have to build your drug empire on the streets of some grim, dark and grimy fictional Eastern European nation, you now get to do it on a fictional tropical island, gone are the depressing streets and in their place we have tropical islands, beaches and vibrant landscapes.

For those that haven’t had the pleasure of experiencing the first game you are probably scratching your head and saying to yourself ‘Well what is it exactly I do in Drug Dealer Simulator 2?” Well, you start off in the game being suddenly woken from your sleep by a raging fire that has suddenly erupted in your downstairs drug lab, after rushing downstairs to extinguish the fire you get acquainted with your drug lab partner and he introduces you to some of the mechanics of the lab, you basically have everything you need in your lab to grow and package drugs for your customers and start your life of easy money.

The basic gameplay loop is that customers will contact you via text message asking for product and you can decide which orders you want to fulfill and at what time you want to deliver to the customer, you then package up your product and go out and deliver it to your customers and make money and earn reputation. You use the money you have earned to purchase equipment for your lab, tools, cars, boats and even other properties where you can set up more drug production facilities to further maximise your influence and profits. One of the core elements of gameplay in the original game was having to evade police when you were out delivering your illegal products to your customers, for some reason police don’t seem to feature in the demo which really takes away most of the tension from the game, hopefully they are planned to be in the full release otherwise the game will be much too easy, there are some thugs dotted around the map that will try chase you down and rob you but these are easy to avoid and nowhere near as scary as the police from the original game. Aside from monetary progression there also seems to be a skill progression system where I assume you could pick skills to level up every time you achieve another level of infamy unfortunately this tab was locked in the demo so I couldn’t get a look at the skill trees and progression available.

I spent around 8 hours in the demo of Drug Dealer Simulator 2 and I did have a lot of fun playing the game, in saying that though the game does feel fairly empty even for a demo release especially with the lack of a police presence, you can basically run around the game delivering illegal products to whoever you want, whenever you want. Graphically the game looks a lot better than the first installment though it still won’t win any awards, most of the graphics look washed out and muddy but thankfully the game does have a much larger colour palette this time around, so you don’t spend most of your time looking at dingy and drab streets and buildings. There was enough here to keep me interested and to get me at least a little bit excited for the games full release, if it sounds like something you might be interested in give it a wishlist on Steam.

Drug Dealer Simulator 2 releases on the 21st of June, with the full game promising features such as hiring your own employees, variable weather cycles and a map that is many times the size of the original game it should be a hit with people who enjoyed the original game.